


The Second Hand Unwinds

by FullOnLarrie



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Aerospace Engineer Louis, Age Difference, All of the science is made up, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, But that's because of the time travel, Exes to Lovers, Happy Ending, Harry in Panties, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Liam is from New York, M/M, NASA, Niall is from California, Physicist Liam, Physicist Niall, Physicist Zayn, Physics, References to Depression, Time Travel, Zayn is not the bad guy, felt like I needed to add that, harry is 22, louis is 30, only not really, trust me okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-08 17:02:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 51,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullOnLarrie/pseuds/FullOnLarrie
Summary: Louis Tomlinson is one of the first members of NASA's top secret Chrono Exploration Program. When things go wrong and he's sent further back in time than planned, he has no other option than to show up on his ex-boyfriend's doorstep.





	The Second Hand Unwinds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daggerandtherose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daggerandtherose/gifts).
  * Translation into Español available: [The Second Hand Unwinds [Traducción]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15344727) by [bourneidentity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bourneidentity/pseuds/bourneidentity)
  * Translation into Italiano available: [The Second Hand Unwinds - Italian Translation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17451848) by [gioo_22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gioo_22/pseuds/gioo_22)
  * Translation into Русский available: [The Second Hand Unwinds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18324572) by [blue1louu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue1louu/pseuds/blue1louu)



> daggerandtherose, I had an absolute blast writing this fic for you. I strayed from the prompt a bit, but I hope you like it. 
> 
> Now that this is no longer anonymous, I can thank people!
> 
> As always, an infinite amount of thanks to my beta [Nic](http://louandhazaf.tumblr.com) who is so much more than a beta. My fics would suck without you. You make me a better writer, period. I’m so grateful for you and our friendship!
> 
> Thanks to my Brit picker [KK](http://catfishau.tumblr.com) who, in addition to Brit picking, also makes me laugh with her comments and always tells me when I make her cry. 
> 
> Thanks to my prereader [phd-mama](http://phd-mama.tumblr.com) for making me dig a little deeper to get to more of the feeeeelings underneath.
> 
> Thanks to these three wonderful people, and to anyone else who may have figured out that this was my fic while it was still anon, for keeping it secret! 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who’s been so nice about this fic. I’ve been really overwhelmed by all of the feedback, and I’m incredibly happy that people enjoy reading it.
> 
> Thanks to [Reagan](http://thestagandship.tumblr.com) for coming up with the prompt that this fic was based on. I’m so glad you like it, even though I changed it up a bit. 
> 
> Lastly, thanks to the mods of the [hlsummerexchange2018](http://hlsummerexchange2018.tumblr.com) for all of the hard work that goes into running an exchange like this.
> 
> Title is from [Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper](https://youtu.be/VdQY7BusJNU).
> 
> [Here’s a link to a rebloggable fic post](http://kingsofeverything.tumblr.com/post/175858671455/the-second-hand-unwinds-by-fullonlarrie-louis), if you’d like to share.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **If you’d like to translate any of my fics, feel free, but please post the translation on ao3, and send me a link so that I can include it in the author’s notes.**
> 
>  
> 
> **Please do not post this fic or any of my other fics on any other websites.**  
>   
> 
> **A quick note:** all of the science in this is fake, so if you're a physicist or a mathematician or a time traveler, please ignore the inaccuracies. There was a point during the writing of this fic where I did try to actually invent time travel, however, I was unsuccessful and had to pretend. I've also never worked for NASA, so everything is from my imagination.

∞

“Why’s it always so fucking cold in here?” Louis asks no one in particular while he waits for the water to boil. The one thing he hasn’t given into in the six plus years that he’s been living in the states is the coffee obsession. Sure, he likes a latte now and then, but he mostly sticks with tea. Sometimes it seems like it’s the only thing in his life that hasn’t changed. He actually heard the word _y’all_ come out of his own mouth not even a week ago and subsequently spent the entire weekend in front of the television watching BBC America, talking back to the screen, and intentionally strengthening his Yorkshire accent. 

“Thirteen thousand people working in the entire facility. Can’t make everyone happy. Or comfortable. Drink your tea and let’s go,” Niall says and flips his hair out of his eyes. It’s less of a command and more of a speech he’s repeated numerous times over the last six years, and the practiced nature of the spiel brings out his southern California accent. He’s standing in the doorway with a can of Dr. Pepper in each hand and Louis can see Liam just behind him in the hall.

Louis finishes making his tea, gives it a final stir, leaves the spoon in the mug, then follows Niall and Liam down the hall to the smaller conference room for their briefing.

This is the smaller of two official briefings about their mission, but this one is more important. This is the real briefing, the one later today with all of the higher-ups isn’t actually about their true mission. Louis rolls his eyes all the time at the ridiculous secrecy of it all, the steps they take to assure that no one knows what’s really going on, and what he sees as a waste of time and resources.

Malik and Doctor Franklin are already seated at the conference table when they walk in. They nod their greetings and get down to business. 

“Gentlemen,” Doctor Franklin begins.

From the chair beside him, Niall mutters, “If you say so.” And Louis barely contains his grin.

Doctor Franklin clears his throat and continues, “You know why you’re here, no formalities, just a review of the procedures. Before we begin, I just want to say that when we asked the three of you to join this program, we hoped that this time would come. It’s been my lifelong dream to reach this point and I know for a fact that you three are the best we could’ve chosen. Now, onto the rest. Zayn?” He turns and gestures for him to take over.

Louis peers down into his tea and takes a sip. He knows what’s coming, has heard it all before, has it memorized, in fact. Doesn’t mean he agrees with all of it and doesn’t mean he won’t make that known. It’s why he and Malik don’t get along and never have, that and Malik’s always been standoffish and weird around Louis, even though Liam and Niall both like him. They’re too quick to toe the line sometimes. Too ready to take orders without question, which is actually probably for the best in these sorts of programs, considering the situations they could find themselves in. Sometimes Louis wonders why he was chosen for this at all. 

“You all know what you have to do. Nothing I’m going to say is new, but I have to say it. So here goes.” And even though it’s informal and the rest of them are all sitting around the table in their jeans and NASA t-shirts, Malik—in his ever present fully buttoned long sleeve shirt, tie, and lab coat—stands up from his chair and takes a step back from the table. “First, I need to say thank you. Doctor Payne, without your work with subatomic particles and superheavy elements, we wouldn’t have the element we need to build the equipment to contain the wormhole when it opens.”

Louis nods and sees Liam salute and then adjust his invisible jacket and tie out of the corner of his eye. 

Malik continues, “Doctor Horan, without you, we wouldn’t have a stable wormhole to work with. I know that you and I have worked together with exotic matter, but it’s down to you.”

This time, Louis turns to watch Niall’s reaction just in time to see him wink and point finger guns at Malik. It’s Louis’ turn now, so meets Malik’s gaze.

“Tomlinson, the planning, engineering, and execution of the Chronocylinder couldn’t have gone better. Thank you all.” 

That’s it. Louis narrows his eyes and stares at Malik, hoping for him to look over again because he may as well have insulted Louis and his work and his place in the program. As if the cylinder is all he’s worked on. 

But Malik keeps his eyes focused elsewhere while he says, “While every test we’ve run has been perfect, there is always the chance for error. Of course, you’re all aware of that. In order to keep this mission as safe and accurate as possible, you’ll need to use the skills you’ve learned in meditation to clear your mind before and during the test.”

Malik turns to look at Louis and says, “The chances of landing inaccurately are minuscule. The calculations have been done again and again, and will be further calculated with the specific stats and information the on-site Chronophysists gather from you. We’re virtually positive that you will all land correctly. However, on the off-chance that an error does occur, all facilities have been built in what research and history tells us is virgin territory, yet within a few hours’ walk to civilization.”

Louis coughs into his fist and takes a deep breath. “I have something to say.”

“Of course you do.” Malik rolls his eyes and gestures for Louis to go ahead.

“The fact that we aren’t better prepared for an inaccurate landing is ludicrous. It very well could happen, but we’ve treated it as almost an impossibility, Malik.” Louis leans forward in his chair and says, “All I’m saying is a little more research should’ve been done.”

“Everything that should’ve been done, has been done, Tomlinson.” Malik crosses his arms over his chest and stares him down, and for a second, Louis wants to jump up out of his chair and scream, but he takes a deep breath instead. 

Niall reaches over and pats Louis’ forearm. “It’ll be alright, man.” 

“Tomlinson, we’ve prepared for every possibility and impossibility. So tell me, what do you do if there’s an error in your landing?” Malik asks. 

Louis sighs and leans back in his chair, swiveling it back and forth before saying, “First, I make sure I’m in one piece. Vision, hearing, pulse, mobility. Then, I walk. You do realize that I would be shit out of luck, right? Like, no job, no money, no phone, nothing. And what if I’m not in one piece?” 

“You’ll be fine. Like I said, the chances are minuscule and if you follow procedure, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Louis clenches his jaw, then says, “Yeah, but we’re not allowed to contact NASA because we could disrupt the timeline, chaos, confusion, et cetera… If we’re lucky, we might eventually be able to find someone trustworthy to help us? And even then, we’re supposed to follow orders and keep our mouths shut. We’re literally expected to build a life from scratch and _just wait.”_

Malik takes a deep breath and lets it out through his nose, his flaring nostrils the only sign that he’s irritated. “It’s unlikely. So unlikely that if it happens, you can say ‘I told you so’ and I will personally apologize to you, Tomlinson. May I continue?”

For a few seconds, Louis just stares at him, plainly letting his disdain show on his face, then he says, “Yes, sir.” And goes back to his tea because this conversation has been played out a hundred times and nothing will convince him that Malik isn’t just a cocky arsehole at this point. So sure that all of his calculations are correct that there’s zero chance for error. It’s infuriating.

The rest of the briefing goes smoothly. There’s no reason for it not to, even Louis’ interruption was probably accounted for ahead of time if he knows anything at all about Malik. Louis can’t help but zone out a little. He and Niall and Liam have time for lunch after this, then they have to change into their official gear for the second briefing with the President of all people, and then he has to go home, stop procrastinating about packing the empty bag that’s been sitting on the floor beside his bed for two weeks, and get some sleep. 

His flight to London is early tomorrow morning, and that’ll be followed by the long drive to the Chronofacility in Doncaster, where he hasn’t been in six years. After that, time travel. 

∞

Louis yawns into his hand and his mouth stretches so wide that his eyes close. He left his flat in Florida before the sun came up and by the time he landed at Heathrow, waited on the runway, and made his way through the airport to the waiting car outside, the sun was on its way down once more. 

And now he’s almost on the other side of the three-hour trip from London to Doncaster. At least he has a driver—though he knows that the driver has security clearance and probably doesn’t typically spend his days driving people from the airport—and has been able to stare out the window and zone out.

It’s been six years since he’s seen any of this, and as they pass by The Dome and, a few minutes later, the park that his mum likes to take his siblings to on Sundays, it strikes him as strange that most of it looks exactly the same. He’s not sure why he keeps looking, except that he knows that in just a few minutes, they’ll pass by the row of shitty, old, brick flats where he and Harry used to live. 

In the six years since their breakup, Louis has built up certain techniques and methods that work very well to keep him from thinking of Harry. The most extreme part of his plan has been to avoid the U.K. completely—out of sight, out of mind does work after all—and it’s been worth it, even though he sacrificed time with his family. Instead, they Skype and FaceTime all the time and he’s spent quite a bit of his savings flying them over to visit him, taking them to Disney World and Universal Studios, and paying for their hotel stays. Still, worth it.

The rest of his efforts have been more along the lines of typical post-breakup, brokenhearted behavior. Keeping his life clear of any and every possible reminder of Harry and just generally keeping busy. For six years.

Maybe he took it a bit far, what with erasing every reference to Harry and the fact that they’d ever been together from his phone, computer, home, office, car, and flat. His general philosophy was “if it makes me think of Harry, throw it out” and that extended to every aspect of his life. He even replaced a good chunk of his wardrobe, as well as the expensive leather wallet that Harry gave him at Christmas just before he left for the states. The canvas and Velcro official NASA souvenir wallet works just as well. 

As far as keeping busy, he doesn’t need to, really. He’s busy enough with the whole ‘astronautical engineer working for NASA’ thing. That was the root of the problems between them in the first place and he only got busier when he was selected for the Chrono Exploration Program.

He was thankful for the time-suck that his career became, especially after Harry made it quite clear that he wasn’t interested in working things out. During the first month or so after their breakup, Louis called, texted, and emailed so often it should have been embarrassing. But Harry never answered, and when he returned the package containing Louis’ Christmas gift for him unopened, Louis gave up. 

Now, he’s staring open-mouthed as they pass by the door to their old flat, and he’s having a hard time keeping the memories from overtaking him. At least he can say that he didn’t ask the driver to stop, but that’s probably only because he knows that Harry left town about a year after they broke up. His mum made sure to tell him as soon as it happened, and after that he asked her not to mention Harry anymore. 

Louis sighs and closes his eyes, letting his head fall back against the seat. He tries to clear his mind, pushing all thoughts of Harry and everything else out, focusing on the emptiness until it’s all that’s there.

The facility is a relatively small, nondescript, two-storey building. It has to be so as not to draw attention and, since it serves only one purpose, there’s no need for it to be large. Louis remembers Doctor Franklin suggesting that they make it look like a factory, but Louis was quick to squash that idea because the people of Doncaster would wonder who was working there, especially once they realized that none of the locals were hired on. There’s no sign and there’s no fence lining the property, it simply looks like a small office building. 

The car pulls around to the back and directly inside one of the garage bays, but Louis waits until the heavy steel door is shut behind them before climbing out from the back seat. He slings his bag over his shoulder and follows his driver inside. When they pass through the door, one of the Chronophysicists is waiting, iPad in hand, and waves the driver ahead.

“Tomlinson?” She asks briskly without looking up from the screen.

“That’s me,” Louis responds, trying to keep the weariness out of his voice. The flight took more out of him than he expected, though he didn’t sleep well the night before either, and he briefly thinks of Niall and his longer flight to Perth and hopes he’s alright. They tried to take jet lag into account, but Louis wonders if twenty-four hours will be enough time to recover before the hop. 

“Any trouble on the way in?” 

“Nope.” Louis wonders if she’s military. She sounds like it. And he wonders if his lack of formality is bothering her. 

If it is, she doesn’t let it show as she continues her line of questioning, “Anything of note?”

“Nothing,” he answers and shakes his head as an image of Harry standing out front of their old flat flashes through his mind. 

“Follow me,” she says and turns to walk down the hall. She never checks to make sure he’s following, and Louis gives himself a second before he does. Yep. Definitely military.

Sometimes he thinks about the fact that he’s literally the only non-military member of the entire Chrono Exploration program and he wonders if there’s a reason they picked him. Both Niall and Liam spent time in the Air Force between high school and college, and Doctor Franklin was a Marine. To be fair, Louis doesn’t think Malik was ever involved in the armed forces, but he doesn’t count. 

Niall says they picked Louis because he’s the best astronautical engineer at NASA, but Louis doesn’t think that’s true. Sure, he’s good, but he worked with many of the others, went to school with a few. No way was he top of his class. Liam says they chose him _because_ he’s _not_ military, that they need someone who’s as close to a civilian as they can get to be involved as well. Maybe that’s it.

He follows her up a flight of stairs and down another corridor, letting his mind wander all the while. He’s tired and his legs and back are a bit sore from all of the sitting, first on the plane, and then in the car. 

“Tomlinson,” she says, startling him out of his tangential train of thought. She’s standing in a doorway, holding the door open for him to walk through. “You’re expected downstairs for breakfast at zero-seven hundred. Testing begins at zero-eight hundred. It’s important that you’re well-rested before the hop, so please let us know if there’s anything you need to make yourself comfortable.” She gestures to the keypad by the door and says, “Just press the call button and we’ll bring you whatever you’d like.”

“Thanks, um…” 

“Lieutenant Edwards.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant Edwards. I should be fine. See you in the morning.” Louis nods and pushes the door closed. 

It’s a small room, like a tiny one-room flat rather than a military-style quarters, which is what Louis expected. The bed is small, but actually looks rather comfortable, so Louis does a few sets of body weight squats, push-ups, and planks, then showers quickly in the small bathroom to get the plane off of him, pulls on a pair of boxers, and climbs into bed. He only needs a few minutes before he’s asleep.

Breakfast is simple, a balance of protein, fat, and carbohydrates that makes Louis think that it’s been planned and weighed down to the gram. The testing is nothing new. A quick run on a treadmill—nothing long or fast, blood pressure before and after, a few small vials of blood, body temperature, height, weight, and that’s it. Still, it takes a few hours, and by the time the testing is complete, it’s time for lunch. Afterward, Lieutenant Edwards leads Louis back to his room where, after sending one last message in their WhatsApp chat to Niall and Liam wishing them good luck and safe travels, he powers down his phone. For the rest of the day, he’s expected to rest, meditate, and wait. 

The problem is that those things won’t take the rest of the day, and there’s only so much Louis is permitted to do. He’s not to exercise, read, or sleep. His phone is to remain off, so he can’t call anyone. So, eventually his mind wanders. He thinks about his family, who don’t know that he’s currently only a few miles from them. Dishonesty doesn’t come easy to him and the last six years have been rough on him; sometimes the guilt feels like it’s dissolving him from the inside out. 

Louis sighs and presses his hands against his eyes. The guilt was easier to stomach and things were easier to compartmentalize when he was thousands of miles away, but being back home, seeing their old flat… Hell, even hearing the Lieutenant’s surname has him thinking of Harry. He’s never regretted anything more in his life than the way things ended with Harry, well, except for the fact that they ended at all. 

He lets himself think about Harry for a little while, wondering where he is now and what he’s doing. He hopes that Harry’s happy; that’s all Louis ever wanted for him. 

The remaining hours drag by, and when the dinner hour passes, he starts to get irritable. It’s understandable that he isn’t allowed a meal this close to the hop, but it doesn’t make it easier. He considers taking a shower, but there’s no reason to, since he’ll have to shower downstairs right before the hop. Instead, he waits impatiently for eleven o’clock to arrive, and when it does, he follows Lieutenant Edwards downstairs.

“Everything you’ll need is on the table just inside this door.” She walks him through the room, showing him his hop-suit—which is still in its airtight container, reminds him to remove any jewellery, goes over the procedure he needs to follow as he washes, then points to the row of lockers. “I’ll meet you and Lieutenant Harold on the other side of that door.” She gestures to the door across the room on the left marked ‘DEPARTURE’, steps back into the hall, leaving Louis alone with this thoughts again. 

Louis glances to the right side of the room at the door marked ‘ARRIVAL’, shakes his head, and drops down onto the bench beside the lockers. He needs to get his head on straight. There’s absolutely no reason for Harry to be on his mind right now. What are the chances that he’d end up with a Lieutenant Harold and Lieutenant Edwards? Maybe he’ll do the maths when he returns from his hop. In the meantime, he needs to forget about it. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, willing his mind to clear. It doesn’t. 

After a moment, he gives up and pulls his own clothes off, balls them up and shoves them into a locker, briefly wondering if he needs a lock like the locker beside it, then he steps into the shower stall and scrubs his body from head to toe twice over. Once he’s completely clean and dry, hair included, he steps into the drawstring cotton trousers, pulls the cotton tunic over his head, and sits down to put on the warm cotton socks and the booties over top of those. Then he takes a few minutes to clear his mind and center himself.

It’s one of the few things that he and Malik agreed on, the meditation. A clear mind should make it easier for the transporter to do its job. The last thing they need is a Chrononaut thinking about dinosaurs or something and somehow interfering with the hop. Not that they’re worried about accidentally traveling to the Mesozoic Era, but there’s no way to be sure, plus it seems like the best way to focus on the task at hand. 

Louis takes one last deep breath and opens his eyes, stands up, and pushes through the door.

“Tomlinson,” Lieutenant Edwards says and nods before looking back down at the control board and computer screens in front of her. 

The man on the other side of the room—Lieutenant Harold, Louis presumes—turns and crosses the floor, waiting until he’s just a few feet away from Louis before he speaks. “If you’ll take your place on the table, we’ll get started. I’m sure you’re sick of it by now, but you’ll have to recite your assignment.”

Louis blinks a few times in an effort not to roll his eyes. He knew this was coming after all. As soon as he takes his place on the table in the center of the room, Lieutenant Edwards presses the button that will record the entire process for history, and Louis takes a moment to collect himself and to push away the idea that he feels almost like he’s having an MRI. It doesn’t help when the table starts to move inside the massive metal tube.

He begins, “Louis William Tomlinson, Chrononaut. Mission Two. Traveling from the Chronodeparture Chamber at zero-hundred hours, Friday 14th of October 2023 in Doncaster, UK to the Chronoarrival Chamber at zero-one hundred hours, Saturday 14th of October of the year 2018 in Doncaster, UK. Procedure requires that I remain in the Chronoarrival Chamber for one hour for debriefing and testing. At zero-two hundred, Saturday 14th of October 2018, I am set to return here, to this time and place.”

“If the mission should go wrong, sir?”

“If I don’t hop far enough back, I am still to follow procedure and allow for the hour of testing, and then I am to return here, to this time and place. If I hop too far back, I’m on my own.”

“Do you understand what you’re about to do, Tomlinson?” 

“Yes, ma’am.”

Lieutenant Harold watches Louis for a moment, then says, “It’s an honor to work with you again, sir.” 

The ‘again’ throws Louis off for a second, maybe he’s met this Lieutenant before and doesn’t recall, but he blinks and is back to his clear mind. Distantly, he can hear the lieutenants speaking to each other, but he pushes it away. Nervousness is to be expected, in fact, Louis has wondered if he might vomit or if it’s possible that time travel might cause loss of control of certain bodily functions, but centering himself helps ease the worry. He breathes, counting slowly, in and out. 

He’s aware that they’re performing last-minute calculations, plugging in coordinates and his own stats into the formulas, running the transport program that will cause the hop. He’s seen Malik perform some of them in one of the world’s most boring PowerPoint presentations. He even understands a good bit, it’s just that it’s not really his thing. Not his area of interest. So he zones out, which is probably for the best at this stage.

Lieutenant Harold’s voice echoes inside the tube. “Counting down from five to begin. Five, four, three, two, one.”

Fleetingly, a thought of Harry enters his mind, but it disappears just as quickly. Louis blinks his eyes open and stares at the inside of the hollow tube. It seems like the hop might be beginning, if the tingling in his limbs are any indication. He tries to keep track of all of the physical and mental sensations for his debriefing after the hop. 

The low murmur from the control station suddenly grows louder, and it’s distracting, so Louis opens his eyes and lifts his head to peer out of the end of the tube in time to see Lieutenant Edwards jump from her seat, scowl and turn away, her voice rising, “Lieutenant Harold!”

The shout startles Louis and he frowns. His mind jumps to Harry, then darts to the oddness surrounding him, the coincidental names and date. 

Saturday, 14th of October, 2023. 

He closes his eyes again, trying to bring his focus back to his landing point. 

Saturday, 13th of October, 2018. 

Louis breathes deeply, trying in vain the bring his thoughts under control. 

Friday, 13th of October, 2017. 

The day after Harry called him in the early morning before he left for work and said he needed a break from their relationship. The day that Harry called again, wanting to take it all back, to apologize, to work things out, and the day that Louis ruined everything for good. 

As if from the other end of a long tunnel, Louis hears the lieutenants’ voices. And then he hears nothing at all.

Apparently, the time travel hop is like being put under for surgery with general anesthesia because it starts off with a little tingling in his limbs, all of his senses seem distant, like he’s hearing, seeing, smelling through someone else’s body, then suddenly there’s nothing. 

Just as abruptly, Louis’ eyes shoot open, his heart pounds in his chest, his entire body feels sore and exhausted as if he just finished one of the heavy workouts that the trainers at NASA make them do, but his mind is alert and becoming more so with every passing second.

He’s lying down, but he’s definitely not in the tube in the Chronoarrival Chamber. The pricking of dry leaves and cool grass against the back of his arms and neck, along with the dark sky dotted with stars and partially obscured by trees and clouds that he sees once his eyes begin to focus, tell him that much. 

The second Louis’ arms stop tingling, he brings his hands to his face, neck, chest, stomach, inspecting every part of his body to make sure that everything made the hop intact. When his legs feel normal again, he slowly pushes himself up to sitting, crosses his legs, closes his eyes, takes a few deep breaths, and tries to calm the racing mess that is his mind.

Rather than try to focus on nothing, Louis goes through the list of possibilities. He’s almost positive that he landed in the wooded area where the facility will eventually be built, so he knows _where_ he is. He just doesn’t know _when,_ though he thinks it’s autumn because he estimates the temperature to be between 15ºC and 18ºC and there are dried leaves on the ground all around him.

It’s likely that he didn’t hop too far into the past, hopefully it’s not more than a few years because the prospect of waiting to return to his own time is enough of a hardship. With no money, no identification, and no way of contacting anyone, he really doesn’t want to live multiple years or even decades over again, all the while avoiding bumping into his family, friends, neighbors and his past self. He knew something like this would happen and they should’ve been better prepared for the eventuality. They would have been, if Louis’ opinions were taken into account, but they were always overridden by Malik.

Louis sighs and stands up, brushing the dirt and leaves from his trousers while he takes a look around. It’s definitely the spot where the Chronofacility will be built, and if he’s not seeing things, through the trees, he can see modern streetlights in the distance. He walks towards them, slightly unsteady at first, but growing more stable and stronger with each step, and when he reaches the road, he turns towards town, for once thankful for the required workouts that he’s had to do for the last six years. 

While he walks, Louis curses Zayn Malik, his arrogance and, for good measure, his stupidly beautiful face. If there’s anything fair in this world, at this very second, Malik is cutting himself shaving, developing a rash of unknown origin, and running face first into a brick wall. All three at the same time. When he finishes cursing Malik, he goes over what he knows.

He knows it’s sometime before 2018 because they built the Chronofacilities that summer. Louis makes a mental timeline of what will happen. Malik comes to NASA in April of that year, Niall and Liam in May, shortly after Louis is asked to join the Chrononaut program. It all happens at a blinding speed after that. Liam will discover his superheavy metal element, Niall will work with Malik to stabilize and expand wormholes, and once they do that, Louis will design and engineer a tube out of Liam’s metal that is the perfect size to contain one of Niall’s wormholes. They almost work in sync with each other as if it’s choreographed ahead of time. 

Now, all he has to do is wait. They’ll reach back through the wormhole to the time and place where he’s supposed to be, so he’ll just have to be there.

Louis turns left at the corner, following the road, searching for something, anything, that will give him a clue as to _when_ he is. It must be late, after midnight, if the quiet, dark, empty streets are any clue. And that’s good because that means that he landed on at least one correct coordinate, the day, date, and year are proving harder to determine. 

He walks on, because it would do no good for him to stop, and when he finds himself at a crossroad, he realizes that if he turns right, he’ll end up at his parents’ house. With his mum, stepdad, and however many children are in existence at this time. 

Shit. 

Without knowing the year, there’s no way to know if his past self is still living at home. 

So he turns left, towards town, keeps walking, and eventually he zones out and his subconscious takes over. His feet take him along familiar roads until he finds himself standing on the pavement outside their old flat, except it’s still their flat, staring at the beat up, old Volkswagen that he easily recognizes as Harry’s, complete with the NASA decal on the back window. 

It’s sometime after he moved to Florida for what was supposed to be a two-year contract with NASA. Louis closes his eyes and braces himself because somehow he just _knows_ that he wasn’t lucky enough to land sometime before their breakup. In fact, he’s almost positive that he knows precisely when he landed. 

If he’s correct, which he assumes that he is, he landed at one o’clock—like he was supposed to, on a Saturday—like he was supposed to, in October—like he was supposed to. Except it’s the fourteenth instead of the thirteenth, and it’s 2017 instead of 2018. He estimates that he’s walked for approximately two hours, putting it near three in the morning.

Louis shakes his head and tries to loosen the clenching of his jaw, but there’s no place for him to direct the anger welling up inside. He can’t scream or he’ll wake the whole street, he can’t punch or kick anything unless he goes after Harry’s car or the brick side of the building, and he doesn’t even have proper shoes on. He wishes he knew where Malik was right this minute because he’d love to funnel all of his rage directly at him. 

As it stands, from what he can remember, before he joined their mission at NASA, Malik was still a student at Leicester working on his Master of Physics. It’s one of things that Louis has never understood and one of the things he continues to hold against Malik to this day. He’s been given far too much leeway for a person with zero experience, fresh out of school. Rumor said that when he was recruited, he still had one term left and finished it in his off-hours.

Leicester is too far to walk.

Louis takes a step back and sits down on the kerb. His muscles ache and he just wants to sleep, but he has to figure out what to do. He spends a few minutes sitting, stands back up and starts pacing, then realizes that if anyone looks out of their window, he’ll not only be visible, he’ll look like he’s about to cause trouble. So he sits back down on the ground behind Harry’s car where the chances of being seen are slim, at least until the neighborhood starts to wake up in a few hours. 

Approximately an hour later, he’s got nowhere. He knows that his best chance is to ask Harry for help because he lives alone and he’s definitely trustworthy, but Harry probably hates him right now. It was six years ago for Louis, but he remembers it like it was yesterday. He hated himself back then too. Still does a little bit.

A door closes somewhere behind him and Louis’ entire body stiffens. He leans over until he can see under Harry’s car to look at the row of flats. It’s about four in the morning which is when Harry leaves for his job at the bakery. He’s standing there fiddling with the temperamental lock on the door, but as soon as it catches…

Louis scrambles around to the other side of the car on his hands and knees, his heart races with adrenaline and when Harry’s in the car, ready to drive away, the decision is made for him. So he stands up beside the passenger door and knocks on the window. He’s just glad that Harry’s scream is muffled by the metal and glass of his car.

Harry fumbles with the door handle, but finally gets it open, and he’s already shouting as he clambers out of the car and stands up to face Louis. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He’s shaking, Louis can see his hand tremble when he brings it up to comb his fingers through his hair. 

Louis holds his hands up, and while they’re still moving, his eyes dart from side-to-side checking to see if any curtains are being pulled back, but thankfully it seems like Harry didn’t wake anyone. Still, he holds a finger to his lips and shushes Harry.

“Fuck you! Don’t tell me to be—” Harry seems to remember that it’s four in the morning because he hisses out the last word. “Quiet.”

“Sorry,” Louis says instinctively, but he knows it was a mistake as soon as the words leave his lips because Harry flips his middle finger up, shuts the car door, turns around and walks back to their flat. Louis follows, not because he expects to be allowed inside, but because he can hear Harry muttering to himself and he wants to know what he’s saying.

“Should’ve known better than to get out of bed… Stupid, stupid, stupid… What the fuck? Why… I hate this fucking lock…” 

Automatically, Louis reaches for the key. It’s something he always used to do when he lived there because Harry would just get more and more frustrated with the lock until he was literally stomping his feet. “Let me?”

Harry scowls at him, unsuccessfully jiggles the key a few more times, then huffs out a breath, blowing his hair off his face, and steps aside. “Fine.”

It takes Louis a bit longer than it used to, but he gets it unlocked, pushes the door open, reaches inside to flip on the lamp by the door, and stands back so Harry can go inside first. He watches Harry lean against the wall to pull off his boots and asks, “Aren’t you going to work?”

“No. I mean, I was.” Harry turns around in the doorway and Louis can see now in the lamplight how tired he looks, but it takes his breath away how beautiful he is. Six years later, and Louis thinks he could still stare at Harry for hours. “They told me to take the day off, but I couldn’t sleep, so I was going to go in anyway, but… Did you seriously fly here to grovel? I told you, it’s over. We’re over.”

“No, um… actually, I—”

“What the hell are you wearing? You look like a nurse or something.”

“Oh, I—” Louis looks down at himself. The tunic and trousers do resemble nursing scrubs, especially with the weird fabric shoes on his feet. “It’s a work thing.”

As soon as he says it, he closes his eyes. Maybe it’s a side effect of the hop that he can’t avoid putting his foot in his mouth. 

“A work thing. Right. Heard that a million times. ‘NDAs mean I can’t talk about it, even with you, Harry.’ Anyway… Did someone drop you off? Can you, like, call them to come pick you up?”

“No, I… No one drove me. I can’t call… Look, um… Can I come in?”

Harry takes a deep breath and his nostrils flare when he exhales, but he nods once and steps aside so that Louis can come through the door, then he disappears down the hall. Louis takes a quick look around, and it’s just like he remembered. The sofa that they got third-hand from Gemma, the odd collection of secondhand chairs around a folding table in the kitchen, the coffee table that they’d decided to build themselves on a whim one weekend. It’s nowhere near level and is made of more nails than wood, but the memory of them building it together makes Louis smile.

“I’m going back to bed. Don’t really feel like talking to you right now, so…” Harry says from the end of the hallway and Louis looks up just in time to catch the pillow and bundle of blankets Harry throws at him. “You can sleep on the couch. We can talk in the morning.”

Louis watches him walk away and just as Harry closes the bedroom door behind him, Louis realizes that the aching in his chest isn’t an effect of the hop or a symptom of his complete exhaustion. The longing that he has been able to conceal from himself for the last six years is out of hiding, back with a vengeance. 

The couch is a shitty place to sleep, but it’s better than the backseat of Harry’s car, which he was contemplating breaking into just before Harry came outside. Louis wraps himself up in the blanket and rests his head on the pillow, suddenly surrounded by the comforting smell of home and Harry. With his eyes closed, he goes through the process of clearing his mind and relaxing his body and soon falls asleep.

His brain doesn’t stop working while he’s sleeping, and when he wakes up it’s with a clear head and a better idea of what he needs to do. He’s curled up on his side, so he stretches his legs out and blinks his eyes open, trying to adjust to the light that floods the room through the open curtains.

“Your hair is different,” Harry says and Louis almost jumps out of his skin. He’s standing behind the couch, looking down on Louis, and it’s been hours, but he still looks as tired as he did at four in the morning.

“What time is it?”

“Almost two.”

Louis sits up quickly and feels around for his phone for a moment before he remembers that it’s not there. He scrubs his hands over his face, then pushes his hair back out of his eyes. “Surprised you let me sleep this long.”

“Yeah, well, I tried waking you, but you were… I don’t know. Thought you were dead for a second. Checked your pulse and everything, but no, just sleeping.” Harry walks into the kitchen and Louis just stares after him.

“Oh,” Louis says and files that information away for his eventual debriefing. 

“Right. So,” Harry says, and he sounds so businesslike that it makes Louis’ stomach churn. He sets down two cups of tea on their wonky table, sits down on the other end of the couch and frowns at his hands in his lap. “I didn’t realize your hair was so long. I guess I couldn’t see it when we FaceTimed.”

“Um, yeah…” Louis looks down at his lap and twists his fingers together. This is going to be a hard conversation to have. He didn’t think it’d start with his hair. 

It’s much longer than it was six years ago. Louis knows that, he just didn’t think about it. There are quite a few changes that he wonders if Harry will notice. Some of them are hidden, like the fifteen pounds of muscle that he’s put on because of the Chrononaut training program, and the tattoo in the center of his chest underneath the words across his collarbones. Three clocks. Past, present, future. Some of the changes are visible now, if only Harry would look at him. But he noticed the hair, maybe he’s just looking when Louis isn’t looking back.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Harry’s hand reaching out for him. He grabs Louis’ chin and tilts his head to the side, and Louis knows what he’s looking for, but he won’t find it. He’s patient though, and lets Harry look without moving. Even when Harry rubs his thumb a little too roughly down the side of Louis’ neck and asks, “Did you cover it with makeup?”

“No, Harry. There’s nothing there.”

“Fuck you, Louis. I know what I saw and I know what guilt looks like on your face, so don’t try to lie to me about this shit.”

Louis shakes his head and sighs because, now that he finally has the chance, he doesn’t know whether or not to try to explain what actually happened that night six years ago.

“Do you have plans today?” Louis asks, hoping that Harry will go with the subject change.

“No. Like I said, I was scheduled to work, but they, um… Well, yesterday I was kind of a mess, so they sent…” Harry wraps his arms around himself and looks away. “I don’t have plans.”

“Ok. Good. I, um… I have to tell you some things. Work related. But it’s like… It’s really complicated and—”

“Of course, Lou, you know me, stupid bakery employee, barely able to count change, there’s no way I’ll—”

“Stop it. Don’t… I’ve never thought you were stupid. You’re not stupid at all. You’ve kicked my arse at pretty much every trivia game in existence. Why… Never mind. Just… We’ll have our tea and then, um, we can talk.”

Harry nods, but he still isn’t looking at him.

“Okay, and then I’ll explain. Everything. It’ll probably take all day. Can’t believe I slept so long. I’ll have to write that down.”

“Hmm?” Harry finally turns to look at him, and he wants to reach out and smooth the line between his eyebrows. Despite the way it happened, it’s good to see him again.

“I’ll explain. I promise. And I’ll answer any questions you have about anything, I swear.” Louis waits for Harry’s response, but all he does is nod and pick up his tea, so Louis does the same and they sit on the lumpy old couch in silence.

In the almost three years that they were together before Louis took the contract with NASA, Louis could’ve counted on one hand the times that he felt uncomfortable and unsure around Harry, and all of those times were within the early stages of dating, when he didn’t know Harry all that well and couldn’t tell what he was thinking at a glance. 

He feels more hesitant and anxious now than he did when he was trying to work up the nerve to ask Harry out the first time. His tea is gone, but he puts the cup to his lips anyway and pretends to take a final sip, then he sets the mug down on the lopsided table, pulls one leg up onto the couch and turns towards Harry.

“What’s the big, complicated, work thing?” Harry asks before Louis can gather the words to start to explain himself.

“Um…” Louis bites his lower lip, trying to decide whether to just blurt it out or go into the back story first.

“You know what? No,” Harry quietly says and shakes his head, then he continues and the anger starts to bleed through. “I actually don’t care. What I want to know is how you can dare show up here like this? You cheated on me. I know it and you know it and I want to know… I…” 

“I didn’t though,” Louis says, voice as soft and gentle as he can make it. 

Harry scoffs. “You have a love bite on your neck, Louis. I saw it yesterday when I FaceTimed you to apologize. I called you because I wanted to work things out, but you didn’t even wait a day before you… you went and found someone else.”

“I didn’t. Harry, please. Can you—”

Harry reaches for Louis’ neck again and squints. “Where is it though?”

Apparently they aren’t going to get anywhere until he clears this up. Louis takes a deep breath and tries to remember. “You told me… Thursday? Thursday. You said you thought we should take a break. That the distance was too hard and that you didn’t know what you wanted anymore.”

“I know what I said, but I—”

“Let me finish? Please?” Louis waits until Harry nods, then says, “You called me Thursday morning before I went to work. Which made for a shitty start, by the way.” He keeps his focus on Harry, trying not to get caught up in how awful that entire day was, even though that afternoon, his team found out that one of their shuttle designs would be used. “Everyone was going out to celebrate this successful design we came up with, but I just wanted to go home.” Harry looks away at that, rubs his hands over his thighs, then glances back at Louis and gestures for him to continue. “They dragged me to a bar, got me drunk, pulled me onto the dance floor. I was wasted. Some of them knew something had happened with us, but not what, and they just kept feeding me shots of tequila. I was dancing. Just dancing. With everyone, really. And then there was this guy—”

“I don’t want…” Harry closes his eyes tight and shakes his head. 

It was horrible. The whole night Louis could think of nothing but Harry. They hadn’t seen each other in months, getting by with Skype and texts and phone calls, but up to that day, missing him was like a constant, low-level ache. That night, he felt hollow and broken and he still doesn’t like remembering it. Louis lowers his voice until he’s almost whispering. “He reminded me of you, and I missed you. So I danced with him. _That’s all.”_

Harry looks at him and rolls his eyes, clenching his jaw, ready to argue, so Louis holds up his hand, gesturing for him to wait. It was so long ago, but even as drunk as he was, he still remembers every detail.

“I was dancing with him, thinking of you, and he… Well, you saw. And I swear, it was like he was a Hoover or something. No lead up, we didn’t even kiss, he just sucked on my neck, hard. I was so drunk that the shock of it took a little while to process and then I pushed him away and I—”

“Stop,” Harry whispers and holds up one finger. 

“Okay.” Louis waits for a few seconds, watching Harry while he seems to gather his thoughts.

“There was…” Harry pauses and shakes his head. “I _know_ there was a love bite on your neck. I just saw it yesterday when we FaceTimed and you said—”

“Do you believe me?” Louis can’t stop himself from interrupting because, while he was expecting Harry to be angry, instead Harry’s voice is quiet and even and he seems to accept Louis’ words as the truth.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I want to, but…” He looks at Louis, then closes his eyes and bites down on his lower lip, and for a moment Louis wants nothing more than to reach out and run his thumb along that lip until Harry releases it. 

But he can’t.

Instead, he decides that the absolute truth is the only thing that makes sense. “Okay. I’m going to say something and you’re probably going to think I’m lying, but I’m not. I just… I want…”

“Just say it.” 

Louis nods and, as quickly as he can, says, “I’m from the future.”

Harry takes a deep breath in through his nose, lets it out through his mouth, and says, “Right. Well.” He rubs his hands over his knees, stands up, gathers their tea cups, and asks, “When are you flying back to the states?” over his shoulder as he walks into the kitchen.

“I’m not… I don’t… Do you not believe me?” He can’t help but feel offended at the thought.

“Of course not, Louis. That’s probably in the top three stupidest things I’ve ever heard.”

Though he knows that, in the same position, he wouldn’t believe it either, Louis is somehow still surprised. He feels his mouth hanging open and promptly closes it. “I… Okay. I can prove it.”

“Sure. Go for it,” Harry says distractedly. He’s not even looking into the living room. Louis can easily see into the tiny kitchen and he has his back turned, rinsing their cups in the sink.

Something about Harry’s complete dismissal of him riles him up. He’s getting irritated, which is probably unnecessary, but he can’t help it. It’s not as if he’s a known liar or a dishonest person and Harry knows that. So he pulls the cotton tunic of his uniform over his head and stands up, waiting for Harry to turn around.

It’s oddly satisfying when he does.

Harry’s eyes go wide and he gasps so loudly that it’s almost comical, then he walks towards Louis with his hand outstretched. “What is… When did you get this? This wasn’t here yesterday when I saw…” He trails off and doesn’t finish his sentence and Louis has an idea of what is running through his mind. 

“Got it in 2018. Right after we…” 

Just then, Harry’s fingers brush against Louis’ skin and he stops speaking and waits for Harry to say something. Harry traces the tip of his index finger along the lines of Louis’ tattoo.

“Praeteritum, praesens, futurum,” Harry slowly reads aloud and looks up to meet Louis’ eyes. “Latin?”

“Past, present, future.”

“I…” Harry closes his eyes and brings his hands to either side of his head. He lowers himself to sit on the couch and massages his temples, then he lets his head drop back onto the couch cushion. It’s so quiet, but Louis doesn’t want to be the one to break the silence, so he watches Harry and after a moment, he picks his shirt up off of the floor so he can pull it back over his head. He freezes when Harry speaks again. “You, um… You… Do you…”

When Harry doesn’t say anything else, Louis pulls his shirt on the rest of the way and says, “Do I what?”

Harry’s eyes search his face, then he clears his throat and asks, “What are you doing here? Like… 2017?”

Louis shrugs and settles back into the couch, taking a moment to think about what to say because he doesn’t want to believe that his own distraction caused this. “Not sure. I was supposed to hop to 2018, but… I don’t know. Something happened. The lieutenants in the departure room were shouting. I was distracted. Not focused… Kept thinking about you… Maybe that’s it?”

Harry raises one eyebrow and looks at him for a few seconds. “What kind of half arsed operation are you guys running at NASA?” Then he snorts and loses it. 

Louis watches him cracking up and slapping his knees until he can’t breathe, and it makes his heart swell. He’s missed this so much. A few seconds later he’s bent over in a fit of giggles and wiping tears from his eyes.

When the laughs peter out, Louis sighs and says, “I honestly don’t know. I blame Malik.”

“Who?”

Louis rolls his eyes and props up his feet. “He— Wait. Are you… Fuck. Okay, first I need to ask you a favor.”

When he was first offered the position at NASA, he was floored. There isn’t much of a call for astronautical engineers specializing in spacecraft design and structural engineering at the UK Space Agency, and he thought that when he finished his master’s degree, he’d go into research at his alma mater or maybe education. It felt like settling, but he didn’t think there was much of a chance for him to get on with NASA when the field of applicants was so large. Still, he applied anyway. 

Harry knew about it at the time, encouraged Louis to apply and wouldn’t hear it when Louis called it a pipe dream. He even managed to hide his surprise fairly well when the offer came in. 

Neither of them really thought it would happen and didn’t consider the reality of a two-year contract with NASA and the toll it would take on their relationship. And they weren’t given much time to think about it after the offer was made because Louis was expected to respond within two weeks. 

There was no question as to whether or not he’d do it. If Louis tried to decline the offer, Harry would know it was because of their relationship, and he refused to be the reason that Louis didn’t pursue his dream job. The issues came afterwards, once Louis accepted the position, signed the contract, and moved to Florida. With the time difference and the long hours and the deadlines and the fact that he couldn’t really talk about what he was working on or who he was working with, their relationship went from almost effortless to _really_ hard work.

“Alright, so, I don’t have a phone or money or ID or anything. I literally only have the clothes I’m wearing.” Louis pulls on the hem of his shirt, then points at the socks on his feet.

Harry doesn’t sound impressed. “And?” 

“You don’t have to say yes—”

“Obviously,” Harry interrupts.

“The protocol for screwing up the time hop like this is to wait until the facility is built, then they can return me to 2023. The problem with that is that I have to lay low. I can’t go to my parents’ house because there are too many people living there. All the kids and… I can’t compromise the timeline like that.”

Harry crosses his arms and hums like he’s just waiting for Louis to get to the point and he probably is. Probably knows what Louis is going to ask before he asks it, actually. 

“Bottom line: I trust you.”

Slowly, Harry crosses his legs and laces his fingers together over his knee. “So?”

Louis holds his gaze steady and hopes he sounds suitably pitiful because he doesn’t think he has any other options and there isn’t another place he’d rather spend the next year if he’s completely honest with himself. “Can I stay here?”

“No,” Harry spits out instantly, shaking his head.

“No?”

Harry tilts his head to the side, studies Louis’ face for a moment and says, “Maybe, then. I have conditions.”

“Conditions?”

“Yes. Conditions.” Harry holds up one finger and says, “First, no secrets, no lies. I’ll basically be, what? Harboring a time fugitive?”

“Um… I mean, I haven’t broken any laws or anything, but…” Louis sucks in a breath through his teeth. It is similar. He has to be sure that no one else knows he’s here. There’s no way of knowing what the repercussions could be. “Sort of.”

“Right. So, no secrets and you can’t lie to me. Anything I ask, you have to answer. Truthfully.”

Louis nods. He’s always hated that the classified nature of his job drove a wedge between them. Keeping secrets from Harry was one of the hardest things he had to do. 

“Alright. Second, you sleep on the couch. And third, you have to clean up after yourself. I’ve spent the last year not cleaning up your messes and I’ve got used to it.”

“Yes, of course. All of it. What… um… Did you want to ask anything?”

“Yeah, I want—” Harry turns his head as “Spaceman” by The Killers starts to play from his phone. “Oh, um… It’s you.” 

He holds the phone facing out so that Louis can see the screen and, sure enough, 2017 Louis is calling. Harry smirks and lifts the phone towards his ear and Louis’ knee-jerk reaction is to grab the phone and decline the call.

Harry snatches his phone back. “What the fuck, Lou?”

“Sorry, sorry. I, um… You never answered when I called.”

“Oh,” Harry says and lays his phone down on the table. “I’m sorry.”

“I mean, you had, um… have every right, so…”

Harry taps his finger against his lips. “I just… I… How do you know that…” He stands up and walks to the window, closes the curtains and turns back to face Louis. “How can you know that I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to answer? Like… How do you know that I didn’t answer because _you_ took my phone and wouldn’t let me?”

“I…” Louis doesn’t know what to say because Harry has a point. One of the things that really ate at him after their breakup was that it seemed so out of character for Harry to refuse his calls. At the least, he expected Harry to allow him to apologize, but he never did. He drops his head into his hands and groans, “Fuck.”

“Wow, really?” Harry sits back down and shoves Louis’ shoulder. “I figured you’d have thought of things like that.”

“No, well, I mean… This wasn’t supposed to happen. Malik swore—”

“Who’s that? You said his name earlier.”

So Louis explains as well as he can, though he skips over the beginning and hopes that Harry doesn’t notice. He tells Harry about Zayn, the program’s assistant director from Bradford via the University of Leicester; and Niall, the blond from SoCal who surfs when he’s not working; and Liam from upstate New York, top of his class at Syracuse, and the heart of the operation. Louis complains about the Chrono Exploration Program and Zayn’s arrogance and how he swore that this was so unlikely to happen that they didn’t really need to prepare for it. 

“But how…” The little wrinkle between Harry’s eyebrows deepens and he asks, “Is this what you’ve been doing the whole time? Were you ever working on the new shuttle prototype? I thought that’s—”

“No. Yeah, I mean… I did work on the shuttle. I guess, um… 2017 Louis still is. It was a few months after…” Louis looks away and scratches at the rough upholstery on the couch. There will probably never be a time when he’ll be comfortable talking about their breakup. “A few months into 2018 that I was asked to join the Chrono Exploration Program. Had to sign all sorts of things—more contracts, new NDAs, what have you—before they’d even tell me the truth about the program.”

“What all do you do then? What’s your job like now?”

Instinctively, Louis clams up because he’s never been allowed to talk about his job. But he can, for once, or he feels like he _has to_ tell Harry, and a sense of relief settles over him. “I _do_ work on the engineering part of it. For a while there, we thought we’d need something tangible, like a ship of sorts, to time travel, but we don’t. There’s a lot of maths—much more than I ever wanted to do in my career, if I’m honest. Oh, and part of it’s training, like, physical training. They make us work out like crazy, which, I don’t know… I hated it at first, but I don’t mind so much now.”

“They make you work out?” Harry asks, eyes wide as his eyebrows slowly climb and he leans back.

“Yeah, like run, lift weights, body weight stuff like push-ups and pull-ups, things like that. We’re supposed to stay in top form.”

“I thought you looked different with your shirt off, but I was distracted by the tattoo,” Harry says as he looks him up and down and Louis actually feels a bit shy. It’s not as though he’s boasting, but he _is_ in much better shape than he was six years ago. All of the sitting he was doing working on the shuttle design on his computer wasn’t doing him any favors. “So, um… tell me about the tattoo.”

“Oh, we all three—Liam, Niall, and I—wanted to get something together. We spent months on this one problem, right? We were able to work out sending things—organic matter, like plants—into the past, but we couldn’t figure out how to bring them back to the present again. Then, one day it just hit me that we were trying to reverse the process, when we should’ve been doing the exact same thing, but on the other side of the wormhole. And it worked.” He’s still so proud of that moment that he can’t help but grin and sit up a little straighter. “That’s when we knew it was only a matter of time before we’d be able to send humans. We all wanted a variation of something time-related and Liam’s friend’s an artist, so he drew up the sketches and we had them done.” 

“It’s a gorgeous tattoo, Lou,” Harry says, and his eyes practically bore through the thin cotton of Louis’ tunic and Louis’ hands involuntarily come up to cover his chest, so he smooths the fabric and changes the subject. 

“Thanks, um… Back to what you said before when I said you never answered.” It’s embarrassing to even remember, but to say it out loud to Harry is causing his stomach to churn and his entire body to heat up. “I, well, _2017 me_ is going to call you again and it’s really important that you don’t answer.”

“Oh? When? So I can be prepared.” Harry picks up his phone and looks at the screen. Louis can see the voicemail notification.

Louis scrubs his hand through his hair and feels the sweat beading at his brow. He really shouldn’t be this self-conscious. It was a bad breakup and it was six years ago. For him, anyway. “Um… Shit. Okay, like every day for a week or so? And then… Maybe once a week until the end of December.”

Harry raises his eyebrows.

“Sorry. Just… Listen, Harry, this is really weird for me because our breakup… Thinking that it’s actually possible that you didn’t answer because… This is just really confusing.”

“Yeah…” Harry nods and bites the corner of his lower lip and Louis has to look away. The breakup and the possible time travel issues related to it aren’t the only disconcerting things. Even though it’s been years since he’s seen it, Louis knows that look on Harry’s face. 

“I called you a lot. And I’m sorry because I’m pretty sure I crossed the line from heartbroken and pining to creepy.” Louis holds up his hand when Harry starts to interrupt, probably to say something else that will further distract Louis from the topic at hand. “I also emailed you. And texted. And I sent you Christmas gifts. You can’t… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to tell you what to do, but… You never responded to anything and you sent your gift back unopened.”

“Lou…” Sorrow is plain on Harry’s face and it tugs at Louis’ heart. The urge to make it better, to tell Harry that everything is alright, is strong. “I… I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I’d… This has to be the reason. You coming here from the future and telling me this is the reason I don’t—didn’t answer or return your calls… I wouldn’t _do_ that.”

Louis doesn’t respond at first. He’s incredibly embarrassed thinking back over his behavior. Most of his downtime was spent with a drink in his hand and the first few months after their breakup were, to this day, the lowest point of his life.

It’s so hard to reconcile _this_ Harry with the one who ignored him every time he reached out, but one of the things he struggled the most with and one of the reasons that he kept trying to talk to Harry long after he should’ve stopped, was that it seemed so unlike him to cut off contact like that. 

“You could be right. This is such a mind-fuck,” Louis says, then he rests his chin in his hand and closes his eyes. He doesn’t know what to think. “Can I, um… Can I shower?”

Harry sits up straight, he must not have realized that he was leaning closer and closer to Louis as they talked. “Yeah, ’course. You, um… Some of your clothes are in the dresser still.” 

∞

It’s strange, showering in Harry’s bathroom. Though by October 2017, Harry’s going on a year of living alone, there’s still a collection of partially empty bottles of Louis’ toiletries under the sink. Which is convenient, even endearing, but also confusing. Everything about this situation is confusing, and it makes sense that it would be, what with the whole time travel thing. 

Louis quietly chuckles and steps forward into the weak spray. He just showered before the hop, less than twenty-four hours ago on his own personal timeline, but he feels like he’s wearing a week’s worth of dirt and grime and dried sweat on his skin thanks to his long walk. 

There’s so much to think about, so much to consider, and Louis wants to sit alone with some peace and quiet and do just that for a while, but he knows that’s close to impossible in this flat. It was always a bit of an issue when they lived together. The flat’s small and they were always tripping over each other when they were both home. 

Back then, he had school and a part-time job and study time at the University of Sheffield and a thirty minute drive there and back every day, so he still got some time alone, but now… He has to lay low for a year. His entire family lives a few miles away, so it’s not like he can just pop out to the shops or go kick the ball around at the park. He’ll be lucky if he gets to leave the flat at all. 

At least he and Harry seem to be getting along alright. It’s going better than he would’ve expected. Not that a few hours spent together is really any indication of what things will be like long term, but at least they haven’t argued much. 

It’s difficult to wrap his mind around the situation with Harry. Louis struggled so much after their break up, feeling abandoned even though, technically, he was the one who left. 

For more than a year he walked around with a gaping hole in his chest that no one else could see, and even after he started to move past it, he continued to feel Harry’s absence. Some days he’d be fine, but then he’d be walking to the break room or driving home after work or doing laundry on the weekend and, out of nowhere, the ache would overtake him. Even years later, whenever Harry crosses his mind, it eats at him, the way that he immediately severed all contact with Louis. 

And now… Harry’s theory that he only refused to communicate with Louis because 2023 Louis told him not to… 

Louis dries off, wraps the towel around his waist, and walks into the bedroom where Harry’s waiting for him.

“Hi,” Harry says from his perch on the edge of the bed. 

“Hi.” Louis stupidly raises his hand and waves from the doorway. He tries not to cringe at his awkwardness and points to the pile of clothes on the bed beside Harry. “Those mine?”

Harry nods, then instead of leaving Louis to get dressed, he leans back, props himself up with his hands, looks Louis up and down, and says, “Missed you.”

Louis coughs for no reason other than to spare himself from having to say anything right away. He crosses over to the bed and picks up the t-shirt off the top of the pile and pulls it over his head with the towel still wrapped around his waist. 

Harry lays the rest of the way down on the bed, so Louis takes the joggers off the bed and steps back until he’s pretty sure that Harry would have to sit up again to see him, but he still keeps the towel secure as he steps into the joggers and pulls them up. 

Once he’s dressed, he sits down beside Harry and says, “We should talk…”

“Yeah? Okay.” Harry rolls over onto his side, so Louis turns and pulls his feet up onto the bed, crossing his legs to force some distance between them.

Louis rests his hands on his knees and closes his eyes, trying to find the words because he feels like such an arsehole. Technically, he and Harry just broke up, or at least 2017 Louis and Harry did, and Harry’s spent the last few days being so upset that the ladies at the bakery sent him home for two unscheduled days off. He’s still trying to get his thoughts together when he feels the bed move and then Harry’s warm hand lands on his knee.

Louis’ eyes fly open and he’s unable to speak as Harry slowly slides the palm of his hand up Louis’ thigh. It’s something he never thought would happen again and the weight of Harry’s hand feels good. And familiar. Even though it’s been years since Harry’s touched him like that. 

“Harry,” Louis says and wishes he could hide the strain in his voice. Their eyes meet and Louis can see the desire in them. Part of him wants nothing more than to lean over, push Harry down onto his back, climb on top of him, and just _look at him._ To touch him again, feel the heat and the press of their bodies together, feel Harry’s lips against his own again… Harry sits up the rest of the way, tilts his head, and moves closer. He lays his hand on top of Harry’s and squeezes it, then whispers, “Harry… We can’t.”

Harry opens his eyes and watches Louis for a few seconds, and Louis doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink, while Harry searches his face. While he knows he looks young for his age and that he was blessed with his mum’s DNA, there are visible signs of that past six years. Wrinkles around his eyes that don’t disappear when he relaxes his face, some grey interwoven with his light brown hair. 

He does wonder what it is that Harry sees because he seems so cautious as he removes his hand from Louis’ leg, sits back and nods. He drops his hands into his lap and looks down at them, twists his fingers together, and mutters, “You’re not him. Not really.”

“Yeah… I’m sorry. I… I don’t really know what to say.”

“It’s alright.” Harry sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “I just miss you… him? Is that strange?”

Louis shakes his head. “Not at all. He misses you too. You’ll see when he won’t stop calling,” Louis says with a self-deprecating laugh.

“I really can’t talk to you—I mean, him? In your time, you haven’t talked to me in what? Six years?”

“Mmhmm, yeah. Six years.”

“Lou… That’s…” Harry lets himself fall backwards onto the mattress and presses his hands to his eyes. It’s overwhelming even thinking about time travel and the whole situation is odd, so Louis understands how Harry feels. At least, he thinks he does until Harry’s hands fall to his mouth to cover it, even as sobs escape past his fingers, and tears leak from the corners of his closed eyes.

It’s automatic, Louis doesn’t even think about what he’s doing when he lays down on his side next to Harry and gathers him into his arms. He doesn’t speak, just holds Harry close and strokes his hair while he cries against his chest until the fabric of Louis’ t-shirt is soaked with tears. When Harry’s sobs turn to quiet whimpers and his breathing seems steady, Louis says, “I’m so sorry, Harry. I shouldn’t have come here. I… I’m sure I can figure something out. It’s not fair to you for me to—”

The palm of Harry’s hand covers Louis’ mouth with a slap, though not hard enough to hurt, and Harry pulls away just until Louis can see his entire face. Red eyes, blotchy cheeks, skin damp with tears. He hiccups as he lowers his hand from Louis’ mouth and rubs his knuckle against his eye, then he sighs, and says, “No, Lou, stay here. I think this is… I think it’s what has to happen, if that makes sense?”

Louis nods. It does make sense. He can’t think of another place to go or anyone else to tell about this without compromising the entire thing. “I’m still sorry. I didn’t think it through…”

“It’s okay. We’ll, um… figure it out. It’s a year, right? So, we’ll be flatmates.” Harry sits up and wipes his eyes again and pushes his hair off his face. It’s longer than Louis remembers, but then again, he only saw it over Skype or FaceTime for months and that was forever ago. He watches while Harry pulls it up and wraps a hair tie around it so that it sits in a messy bun on top of his head. “We were friends before we dated. It’s not a big deal, really.” 

“Harry…”

Harry shakes his head. “No, Lou, listen. If you can live through six years of nothing between us, I can handle a little weirdness and be your flatmate for a year. I’ll be fine. Besides, I probably need you here to remind me not to pick up the phone when you call.” 

The corners of Harry’s mouth turn up at that, because he’s right and Louis knows then that he’ll stay. It won’t be the worst thing in the world, living with Harry, even before they were together, they were friends and Harry was one of his favorite people. They’ll just have to have boundaries and respect them. Harry’s right. It’ll be fine.

∞

It actually _is_ fine. At least for a little while. Harry goes back to work and Louis stays at the flat by himself, reading, working out as best he can inside and with no equipment, keeping himself busy by trying to do absolutely nothing to disturb the timeline, which is actually harder than he thought it would be. He almost opens the door when a package is delivered one day, but stops himself just in time, then watches the delivery man leave it at the front door. 

A few weeks later, Louis is so bored that he thinks he might lose it, so on Harry’s next day off, they decide to chance a trip out of Donny. Nothing big or hugely public, in fact, they drive all the way to York because it’s an hour away and neither of them can think of anyone they know who lives there, and then all they do is go to a different Tesco. 

Still, it’s like a holiday of sorts for Louis. He’s been living in Florida for so long, depending on his mum to send him his favorite teas and snacks whenever she feels like shipping him a package. They’re almost finished crossing things off of Harry’s list before Louis realizes that he’s just been tossing things into the basket without thinking about how he’s going to pay for them. So he tries not to draw attention to himself as he attempts to sneak the items back out of the basket one at a time and slip them onto shelves as they pass by. 

“What are you doing?” Harry stops walking and grabs the Branston’s pickle that Louis just slipped onto the shelf beside a tin of beans, then tosses it back into the trolley. 

Louis shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs his shoulders. “Forgot I can’t buy all that.”

“It’s fine, Lou. I can buy you some pickle now and then if you want them. We’ll think of some way for you to pay me back,” Harry assures him and then he winks. He fucking winks and Louis’ mouth drops open and then Harry sputters out an apology and says, “I meant, like, you could do my laundry or something.”

Louis hums and raises his chin. “Right.”

“Shut up.” Harry rolls his eyes, but he’s clearly embarrassed as he quickly pushes the trolley away from Louis and leaves him standing in the middle of the aisle.

The next month or so passes by in what seems like slow motion for Louis. He actually starts to miss Florida and he misses his family so much. Even though they didn’t see each other in person all that often, they held a big family Skype session at least every other week, and he spoke to his mum as often as he could. He knows that technically 2017 Louis is still doing all of that, but the thought of missing his family for a year is hard to swallow. 

By the time December rolls around, he’s begging Harry to go to the library for him, to entertain him when he’s home, to do something. He even considered attempting to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving the week before, but Harry refused to buy him a turkey. Not that Louis can blame him. He doesn’t know the first thing about cooking one, they’re not exactly inexpensive, and a whole turkey is a lot for two people to eat.

“Sorry. I know I’m annoying,” Louis says and doesn’t try to hide his pout. “You don’t have to spend your time with me, you know. You should hang out with your friends.”

“Yeah… About that, um…” Harry leans over the kitchen sink to rinse the last of the dishes, then hands it to Louis to dry. “They’ve been pretty cool about giving me space because of the, um, breakup.”

“Oh.” Louis stands there holding the casserole dish feeling like such a prick. He’s been so concerned about being bored, reading trashy novels from the library, watching telly all day, and not thinking about Harry’s life outside of the flat at all. 

“They, um, they said they’re going to let me have December, but after that I’m not allowed to sulk anymore.”

“You’ve been sulking?”

“I have been when I talk to anyone else. It’s weird, Lou. I can’t _not_ be heartbroken.”

That hurts. Louis didn’t realize or maybe he’s been intentionally avoiding thinking about it at all, since Harry seems fine when they’re at home. “Harry… I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Harry shrugs one shoulder and reaches into the fridge for a beer, then kicks the door shut. “I’m a little quieter than usual and I pout a little bit. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is though. I don’t…”

“It’s not hard to pretend, really.” 

“Wait, so you’re not actually sad?”

“No,” Harry scoffs. “Why would I be?”

_“Why would you be?”_ Louis’ eyes go wide and he takes a step backwards, feeling the sudden need to get away from Harry. “I don’t know, maybe because our relationship ended? Maybe because six years ago, I was fucking obliterated by our breakup? Maybe because right now, I’m—2017 Louis, I mean—is barely coping? Jesus. This is fucked up.” 

He crosses his arms, trying to keep himself from gesticulating anymore. As if losing his temper isn’t bad enough, flailing his arms all over the place and raising his voice… He turns to leave the room, but the only place he can go is the fucking bathroom because their bedroom isn’t theirs, it’s Harry’s. 

“Lou, wait. I’m— I’m sorry.” Harry grips Louis’ shoulder and tries to get him to turn back around. 

Louis can’t though. Or won’t. He’s mortified at his admission of how much their breakup hurt him, especially seeing that it’s not really affecting Harry, but he knows he has no right to tell Harry how to behave. 

“Hey, listen, okay? I didn’t mean… It’s hard to get my feelings, like, _in order._ Just the fact that there are literally _two of you_ in the world right now is fucking mind-blowing. It’s hard to always remember that.” He sounds desperate to explain, so Louis slowly turns around, and after blinking to clear his eyes, he meets Harry’s gaze.

Harry drops his hand to his side and takes a step closer. Too close probably. He lowers his voice as he continues, “And you _are_ here. We may not be together, but you’re living with me and I’m talking to you and seeing you every single day. It’s like relationship limbo or something. And, yeah, it’s hard to feel heartbroken about losing you when I know that you… that _some version of you_ is here with me right now.” 

“I’m not—”

“I know, Louis. I know that _my_ Louis is in Florida, probably thinking I’m a real dickhead right now. I know that you’re… shit, you’re almost thirty! I know—”

“I’m twenty-nine.” Louis crosses his arms and taps his foot.

“That’s what I said.”

“Is not.”

“Whatever, Lou.” A little smile creeps onto Harry’s face and he shakes his head. “I’m just saying, I get it. As much as I can get it, anyway. Okay? I’m trying.”

“Yeah, okay. I’m sorry. I probably overreacted. A little. I know this is a strange situation.”

“Just a bit.” Harry nods once, then reaches out and pokes Louis in the chest. “I wanted to ask you about Christmas.”

“What about it?” Louis asks and pokes him back. Hard.

“Well, I was planning to go home.” Harry punctuates each word by poking Louis in a different spot and Louis lets him. 

“Yeah?” Louis uses both hands, circles them around in the air between them and Harry takes the bait. He starts to back away and raises his arms to block Louis, who keeps his arms moving, letting Harry think he’s looking for an opening to poke him in the stomach.

Harry’s eyes dart around as he tries to watch Louis’ hands and face at the same time. “Yeah, my parents want me to come visit, so I—”

Both of Louis’ hands connect with Harry’s wrists just as Harry’s heels knock into the wall behind him. Perfect timing. 

Louis immediately switches his grip to hold Harry’s wrists with his left hand, lifts them up, and presses them into the wall above his head. Then he proceeds to poke and tickle Harry in all of his most sensitive spots until he’s laughing so hard that he can barely breathe and he begs Louis to stop with tears in his eyes and a massive grin on his face. 

Christmas is forgotten as they both fall onto the couch, giggling until they can’t anymore. 

∞

“Did you want to do anything for your birthday?” Harry asks while he stirs a pot of soup on the stove. “I mean, it wouldn’t be _on_ your birthday, but maybe Friday?”

“Hmm? Oh, I didn’t…” Louis steps down from the stool where he’s been standing so that he can wrap a strand of fairy lights around the top of the window. “I guess I assumed I’d just do nothing.”

“That’s boring. Don’t you want to celebrate? Thirty’s a big one.” Harry walks into the living room and watches Louis fasten the lights over the window.

“It’d just be me and you, Harry. There’s no need. And we still have Christmas.”

“Yeah, but I’m leaving Saturday. Early. And I won’t be home until Tuesday.”

“You’re leaving?” Louis asks, immediately disappointed. Not that he thought they’d be able to do much more than what they do every day, but… alone on Christmas. With his mum right down the road. 

Harry nods slowly. “I told you. My parents want me to come home for Christmas.”

“Oh… I forgot. I…” Louis climbs down from the stool and, with a heavy heart, he says, “It’s fine. Technically, I already turned twenty-four in 2017. So…”

“That’s true. What did you do?”

“I… I’d rather not say.” Louis presses his lips together. It wasn’t a good day. “Though, I suppose you should be on the lookout for a package. I shipped your gift in enough time for it to get here and for you to send it back by Christmas Eve.”

“Oh, Lou… Sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. Don’t apologize. I mean, apparently it’s my own fault anyway.”

“True.” Harry chuckles quietly and asks, “So, what was the gift?”

“I’d rather not say.” 

“You’d rather not say? Is that how they teach you to respond to questions? Your canned answer?” Harry lets out a short, derisive laugh and walks back into the kitchen. “You’d rather not say what you did on your birthday and you’d rather not say what my gift is, even though I can’t open it.”

Louis shakes his head. Harry doesn’t really need to know either answer.

After one last stir, Harry turns off the cooker and joins Louis in the living room. Silently, he helps finish putting up the last few decorations, but Louis can feel a slight tension in the air. It’s been years since he’s been around Harry, but he can still read his moods. When Harry finally speaks, Louis should’ve anticipated his words.

“Condition number one was no secrets or lies,” Harry says, watching Louis carefully through slightly narrowed eyes.

Louis sighs and deflates a little. “It was.”

“Mmhmm.” Harry nods and taps his toe. This could turn into a shitty night if Harry pushes him and he says too much. "But I’ll give you a break. You only have to tell me one—what you did on your birthday or what my gift is—and it’s your choice.” 

“Right.” Louis lowers himself onto the couch and stretches his legs out to rest his feet on the crooked coffee table. “Just so you know, this doesn’t feel like much of a choice.” 

Harry smirks and sits down next to him, smugly crossing his arms like he thinks he’s won an argument. “That’s the price you pay, Lou.”

It’s not funny, is the thing. And he knows this is like a litmus test. Harry only wants Louis to tell him the truth, it just so happens that he picked two sensitive subjects. Louis didn’t consider anything like this when he promised to answer whatever Harry asked. There are parts of his past that he won’t tell and, hopefully, Harry won’t ask. Maybe Harry isn’t thinking things through properly. Maybe he drank more wine while he was cooking than Louis noticed. But it’s an impossible choice and it comes down to which is less humiliating. 

Louis opens his mouth to tell him about his birthday, then closes it again and shakes his head. 

There’s no way he’s telling Harry that after receiving his returned Christmas package on Saturday, the day before his birthday, he went out to the closest club—the one more well-known for its toilets than its dancefloor—and drank what probably amounted to half a bottle of gin by himself, went home with the first taker, and ended up getting fucked over the back of some red pleather couch. 

He was so wasted that he couldn’t get hard, despite trying for far too long, and ended up not coming at all, taking an Uber home at four in the morning, and spending the entire day of his actual birthday in bed, alternating between feeling sorry for himself and feeling disgusted with himself. Not his finest moment.

Louis clears his throat and he picks at the fuzz on his joggers, then mumbles, “Just some jewellery.”

“What?”

The hard part is lying, because he’s horrible at it—he’s never had a convincing poker face. But he thinks he can swing it if it’s a lie of omission. “Just like, a necklace.”

“Oh,” Harry says and smooths the fabric of the blanket that’s thrown over the back of the couch. “That’s, um… Thank you. I’m sure it’s lovely.”

“Yeah… I, um… I still have it.” Louis bites his lip hard enough that he hopes he can stop himself from saying anymore, but the words keep coming. “When I get back, I could send it to you or something. If you still want it.”

Harry looks at him for a moment and Louis can practically feel his stare boring through him. If he keeps it up, he’ll see all of Louis’ thoughts laid out in front of him like a book. He blinks and nods, then heads back to the kitchen to fill their bowls with soup.

Dinner is almost silent, except for the alarm bells going off in Louis’ head. That’s the first time that either of them have mentioned what happens after Louis gets back to his own time, though it’s been in the back of his head.

“Lou, um… What… What do I… Fuck.” Harry drops his spoon into his empty bowl and it clangs against the ceramic. “Can you tell me anything about me, like, after… you know.”

Louis stands up and takes their bowls to the sink and washes them while he thinks it over. He’s not sure what he would even tell Harry, since all he knows for sure is that Harry moved away from Doncaster about a year later. Any other information, he’s purposefully avoided in his quest to rid his entire life of anything _Harry._

“You don’t stay in Donny.”

_“Shocking,”_ Harry deadpans.

“Yeah, well, that’s all I know. So…” Louis dries his hands on the tea towel and leans back against the counter.

“Don’t make me remind you of the conditions again.”

Louis rolls his eyes and says, “I’m serious. Christmas a year after we broke up, I flew my family in for two weeks, and it was the first thing my mum said when she got off the plane. _Harry’s left that little flat of yours and moved to the city._ And I asked her not to mention you anymore after that.”

“The city? Which one?”

Louis shrugs. “No idea. Which one do you want it to be?”

“I don’t know, Lou. I… I haven’t even thought of moving, to be honest. I was waiting for you, um, well, the other you to come back. The NASA contract has another year, so… I mean…” Harry pushes his chair back and stands up, then heads straight for the couch which he sprawls over immediately.

“Something to think about.” Louis tosses the tea towel onto the back of one of the dining chairs and follows Harry, squeezing his body into the remaining space and folding his legs up so he can wrap his arms around his knees. “I wonder what you do… Like, do you go to uni? Become a pastry chef? A photographer? A teacher? An accountant? What?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. I mean, if, um… if we’re not together, then I’m not waiting for you to come home, and I…” Harry’s voice trails off, weak and cracking on his last few words.

Louis tries to move quickly, though he’s not sure what good it’ll do, but by the time he gets his legs untangled, Harry’s already shot up off the couch and disappeared down the hall into the bedroom. 

A few minutes later, Louis follows and knocks on the open door. He knows that Harry doesn’t want him around while he’s upset, but it’s his fault that Harry’s upset in the first place, so he feels like he has to at least try to help. He’s not sure what to do though, so he just leans against the door jamb and watches Harry.

He’s sitting on the edge of the far side of the bed with his back to the door, looking at his phone, but he must know Louis is there because he doesn’t raise his voice at all. It’s barely above a whisper when he says, “I keep forgetting. And then I remember and it’s like it’s happening again. It tears me apart all over.”

“Harry…” Louis steps into the room, but stops when Harry speaks.

“I haven’t thought about moving or leaving the bakery or going back to uni or anything. I haven’t thought about my future because I was planning it with you and… and I keep forgetting that we don’t have a future together anymore.” Harry finally turns to look at him over his shoulder and it makes Louis’ throat tighten to see the tear tracks on his face. “It’s so easy to ignore with you here, but I guess when you leave, it won’t be.”

“Yeah, I… I keep apologizing and I’m kind of worried that the words _I’m sorry_ have lost all meaning. But, Harry, we… we can…” Louis takes a step towards the bed and offers, “If you still want to, my number’s the same, so you can call when I get back.”

Harry turns the rest of the way around and drops his phone onto the mattress and Louis can see that he was scrolling through his pictures, looking at the album full of the two of them together. For a moment, Harry just stares at him, unblinking, then he asks, “How will I know when you make it back?”

“Well, um… Like I said, you can call. Or text. If things go the way they’re supposed to, I’ll be back Saturday, the fourteenth of October.”

“2023?”

“Yeah. 2023. I think… I don’t _know_ what the return hop will be like, but I think it’ll be worse as far as side effects go. You saw me when I got here. I was exhausted and slept for almost half a day.” Louis shrugs and reaches up to scratch at the back of his head. He’ll probably fall asleep as soon as he gets back and wake up a week later or something crazy like that. “They’ll want to debrief me, so that’ll take a while, I’m sure. And then they’ll probably fly me back to Florida ASAP to meet with Malik and Doctor Franklin. Hopefully not the President again, that—”

“Louis.”

“What?”

“Get to the point.”

“Oh, sorry. Um… I suppose that if you do call or text me, I’ll get it as soon as I have my phone. I left it in my room at the facility with the rest of my stuff.”

“Okay. I’ll, um… text you. October fourteenth. Probably at like five after midnight.”

It’s just a few steps to the bed, so Louis is there in a second, and sits down across from Harry. “I know this is hard for you. I wish it didn’t have to be like this. And I’ll… I’ll understand if you forget, um… If you don’t remember or if you don’t want to. Six years is a long time.”

Harry just shakes his head and lays down on the bed, flat on his back with his hands resting on his stomach. “I think I’m going to go to bed. Need some sleep.” 

Louis stands back up and watches as Harry rolls over onto his stomach and pulls the duvet over his body, resting his head on his folded arms. Just as Louis is about to close the door, he hears Harry say, “I’ll remember.”

∞

When Harry’s gift arrives, he brings it inside, drops it onto the sofa cushion beside Louis and leaves the room without even saying hello. 

While he’s been expecting it, it still sends his stomach plummeting and for a second he considers throwing caution to the wind and opening it, ripping into the cardboard box and giving the gift to Harry, fuck the consequences. But that prospect is slightly more frightening than irreversibly disrupting his own timeline, so he leaves it. 

It’ll have to go to the post office to be returned though, which means Harry’ll have to do it, unless he wants to drive Louis an hour or so away to some random post office. Knowing Harry, he’d probably rather do that.

Surprisingly, Harry doesn’t mention it at all, but the next morning when Louis wakes up, the package is gone, and when Harry gets home later that day, he leaves the receipt on the coffee table. 

Though Harry insists that they do _something_ to celebrate Louis’ birthday before he leaves for Holmes Chapel, that Friday—the day before his birthday—passes with very little fanfare. Harry does bring two cupcakes home from the bakery, though there are no candles and he simply says, “Happy thirtieth, Lou.” It’s melancholy and quiet and they end the evening on the couch watching _It’s a Wonderful Life,_ pretending they’re not crying, and _Elf,_ which Harry falls asleep part way through.

Early Saturday, Harry packs his bag and the gifts he bought for his family into the car, then comes back inside to fill his water bottle for the drive. He stands by the door, twirling his keys in his hand, and watching Louis with his bottom lip caught between his teeth, obviously wanting to say something. So Louis waits. He leans his shoulder against the wall, crosses one ankle over the other and shoves his hands into the pockets of the old pair of Harry’s jeans that he found on the floor that morning.

“While I’m gone, um…” Harry coughs into his fist and looks away, then offers, “You can sleep in the bed, if you want. Give the couch a break.”

He was planning to anyway, but he doesn’t tell Harry that. Instead, he nods and says a quiet thanks. Without warning, Harry moves from the doorway into Louis’ space, almost knocking him over when he circles his arms around Louis’ shoulders. Eventually, Louis gets his hands out of his pockets and returns the hug, pulling Harry close.

“Happy Christmas, Lou,” Harry says and when his lips lightly brush the skin of Louis’ neck, he takes a quick step back.

“You too, H. Have a good time with your family.” Louis follows him to the door and, after Harry shuts it, Louis stands there, resting his forehead against the wood, while Harry fumbles with the key in the lock outside. 

His birthday and Christmas suck. Louis misses his family, his mum especially because she always makes his birthday special even from across the Atlantic, and he feels incredibly lonely. He spends Christmas Eve—his _thirtieth_ birthday—unable to think about anything other than precisely what 2017 Louis is doing at each moment throughout the day. It’s not something he’d ever mention to Harry, but as difficult and painful as it is for Harry to ignore the texts and calls, Louis thinks it’s harder for him. Because every time it happens, Louis remembers how increasingly broken he felt with each passing day. He misses his mum so much and he spends most of the morning working out as hard as he can so that he can’t dwell on it. Turning thirty all alone. He does press ups until he drops, squats and lunges until his legs feel like jelly, and sit ups until he can’t actually sit up and has to roll over to get up off the floor.

Then, he tries to get wasted along with his past self, though he only has Harry’s collection of supermarket wine to drink his way through, so by the time he’s in the middle of his second bottle, he falls asleep on the couch. 

When he wakes up, he knows he’s going to be sick eventually, but it’s a slow moving hangover, so he’s able to take his time getting to the bathroom because every muscle in his body is screaming. Then he takes the longest hottest shower he can stand, and passes out again, still damp, in Harry’s bed, which is where he spends the remainder of Christmas Day.

It’s so comfortable that Louis never wants to leave Harry’s bed again. His bodyweight workouts and stretches and general anxiety about screwing up his own timeline (and somehow making his future self disappear or something like in _Back to the Future)_ have kept his discomfort from sleeping on the couch at bay. But now, he knows he’s going to hate going back to sleeping in the living room.

He doesn’t feel well enough to do anything until long past dark, so he eats some leftovers and takes the opportunity to go on Harry’s laptop, that he left behind so that Louis could watch Netflix, and mess around. It’s been an adjustment to get used to not having a phone on him at all times. He’s completely unconnected to the world, which is for the best, but he misses it. He can’t call his mum and he can’t log in to any of his social media or his email, lest he alert his past self that something is going on, so he settles for checking up on his coworkers. 

Niall is laughably easy to find on every single social media platform in existence, and Louis can almost hear his Southern California accent saying that he’s got nothing to hide. He clicks around for a bit, then goes to the Caltech website where he knows that 2017 Niall is currently involved in research and experiments on expanding and stabilizing worm holes. There’s a little blurb about him in the news section and Louis can make out his little blond head in the back of one of the photographs. Louis smiles at the knowledge that in just a few months, the longshot position at NASA that Niall just applied for will be his. 

Of course, Liam is more difficult to find in anything other than a professional capacity, so Louis doesn’t bother looking after the first few searches turn up nothing. He goes straight to the Syracuse website and even then it takes him a little while to find a trace of Liam there. He’s in his first year of the Aerospace Engineering PhD program, which… that doesn’t seem right. He’ll be in Florida in less than a year, bringing his research on subatomic particles and superheavy elements with him to work on the Chrono Exploration Program. 

Louis stares at the screen, but there’s nothing he can do and not much information out there about Liam. Even once he joined them at NASA, Louis was never able to find anything more about him than what Liam wanted him to know. Louis shakes his head and opens a new tab to search for Malik. Just the thought of him makes Louis clench his teeth and he doesn’t bother looking for him anywhere other than the University of Leicester’s Physics and Space Science program. He’s there, easy to find, and Louis chuckles quietly when he sees that while the master's degree he’s pursuing is in the sciences, for his undergrad he double majored in Physics and Maths _only after_ spending an entire year in the Fine Art Painting and Drawing program at the University of Northampton. 

It’s not that it’s funny or that there’s anything wrong with a degree in art, it’s that Malik has always come across as this uptight, nerdy, know-it-all. Casual Friday means that everyone else wears jeans and NASA t-shirts, and Malik shows up every Friday in his lab coat, with jeans and a button-down, but no tie. Niall and Liam act like it’s this hilarious joke, but Louis knows it’s just one more way that Malik thinks he’s better than the rest of them. With his unfinished degree and his top level security clearance. 

Louis wrinkles his nose and closes the open window, then reopens it to clear the browser history, shaking his head at himself for almost forgetting. He tries to watch a film, but barely notices what’s on the screen, too busy thinking about Liam’s PhD and later, thinking about Harry. 

He kind of wishes he kept up with Harry from a distance. Surely his mum knows where Harry moves to when he leaves Donny. She might even know what he’s doing. And whether or not he’s single. Louis takes a deep breath and puffs his cheeks out to exhale. He can’t afford to think of Harry that way—talk about a guaranteed mess. 

Instead, he makes himself consider all of the things that Harry might actually be interested in doing once he no longer works at the bakery. He remembers when Harry first started working there part-time. At that point, he was still planning to pursue a degree in accounting because he didn’t know what he wanted to do and it was the first thing listed on the University of Sheffield’s courses page. It didn’t take him long to decide he was wasting time at uni; he dropped out partway through his first year and slowly worked his way to full time employee at the bakery in the hopes that they’d let him actually _bake_ something. 

Harry always thought he was keeping that ambition to himself, but Louis knew right away that Harry was more interested in mixing flour and sugar than in counting change back to customers. Maybe he’d still like that. There are a number of culinary schools in London. Louis files that away to bring up the next time Harry wants to talk about his future. 

Sober and huddled under the duvet on Harry’s bed is a wildly different experience than passed out cold and so hungover that he had to close one eye to read the label on the paracetamol to make sure that was what he was taking. 

It’s cold, of course it is, it’s Christmas in Doncaster and the heating in the flat is shit and even with socks and joggers and one of Harry’s hoodies, Louis still pulls the covers over his head to collect every warm breath that he exhales. 

In his quest to rid his life of anything that could possibly remind him of Harry, he even switched his laundry detergent, but cocooned in Harry’s bed, in Harry’s clothes, with Harry’s pillow and Harry’s sheets, it’s like he’s submerged in Harry’s scent. 

Memories from the first time they spent the night together, both of them were so nervous that they laughed into each other’s mouths more than they kissed, and after they pulled it together, Harry accidentally bumped Louis’ balls with his knee. It couldn’t have gone worse, and yet it was the best night of Louis’ life up to that point. 

Flashes of them doing laundry together, arguing over whether or not to wash sheets with towels, Louis sitting on top of the tumble dryer poking at Harry with a coat hanger to make his point until Harry snatched it out of his grasp and kissed him to shut him up.

In Florida, opening packages from Harry and ignoring the contents for a few minutes just to inhale the scent of him that lingered inside the box. 

The spot on Harry’s jaw, right underneath his ear that Louis used to nuzzle and lick and bite, where he would press his nose against Harry’s skin, close his eyes and just breathe him in.

Agitation creeps up on him. In the two months that he’s been living on Harry’s couch, he’s managed to mostly avoid these thoughts. When, inevitably, his mind has taken him down paths tangentially connected to… the more intimate aspects of their relationship, Louis has veered in the extreme opposite direction. When that didn’t help, he exercised. And it’s worked. 

Now, though, alone in the flat and inescapably surrounded by innumerable sense memories, Louis gives in. Harry won’t be home until the following afternoon, so there’s plenty of time to wash the sheets.

∞

When Harry returns in the early afternoon on Boxing Day, Louis has a bit of a revelation. He missed him. And not just because he’s the only human he’s interacted with since the day they drove to the out of town Tesco. He missed him _._ Because seeing him walk through the front door of the flat is like… all of the boring and dull and empty spots in his life instantly disappear. 

“I thought you’d be back late,” Louis says, reaching for one of the bags in Harry’s hands, then snatching his arm back, and watching Harry struggle to get through the door with them all. “Figured you’d want to spend Boxing Day with your family.” 

“I guess, um…” Harry drops all of the bags onto the couch and turns to look at Louis, pinching and pulling on his lower lip before he says, “I probably would’ve if you weren’t here. Don’t, you know, don’t be mad. I don’t think it changed the future?” 

Harry scrunches his nose and Louis snorts and then smiles so wide that his vision goes a little blurry because, of course, Harry actually considered something like that. He tries to reign it in, forcing a slight scowl to balance the smile that might have given too much away. “Too late now, isn’t it?” 

“Probably.” Harry shrugs and says, “Missed you. Sorry. I know I’m not supposed—”

“It’s alright. I might have missed you too.” Louis grimaces as he turns away, embarrassed at his inability to hide his feelings from Harry. He leaves the room without another word, hiding out in the bathroom, taking an unnecessary shower, and avoiding Harry as much as possible for the rest of the day. By the end of the night, he’s exhausted from second guessing every word he says and making sure he doesn’t reveal too much with his actions.

∞

Moving back to the couch after sleeping in Harry’s bed makes the couch infinitely more uncomfortable. Louis tosses and turns through three nights and then, on Friday, he’s so sore and irritable that it’s the first thing Harry notices when he comes home from work.

“What is your deal?” Harry’s still wearing his coat and he’s scowling at Louis where he’s sitting on the floor, grumbling and trying to stretch his back. 

Louis groans unnecessarily loudly and pushes himself up off the floor. “My back is bothering me a little. It’s fine.”

Harry hums and nods and leaves Louis in the living room while he goes to wash off the flour and sweat from the bakery. When he appears again, he’s in grey joggers and nothing else, except for the towel wrapped around his hair. Louis blinks and blinks and finally squeezes his eyes shut for a few seconds before he reopens them. But now, instead of walking toward him in those joggers that literally draw more attention to his dick than if he was fully nude (especially because he is clearly not wearing pants), Harry’s in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter beside the kettle, towel in his hand instead of on his head. His hair is still wet enough that drops of water are sliding down his chest. 

Louis blinks again and his mouth goes dry because he can see the outline of Harry’s cock, like _details,_ and he wonders if Harry bought these joggers specifically because of this… feature.

“Sorry, what?” Louis asks, because Harry said something, but he has no clue what. He stares hard at the kettle on the counter for fear that if he tries to focus elsewhere, his eyes will immediately drop to Harry’s crotch.

Harry clears his throat and Louis chances it, puts all of his effort into raising his gaze to Harry’s face, only to find Harry watching him with a knowing smirk. He crosses his ankles, but Louis stays strong and doesn’t look down, even though in his peripheral vision he can see Harry’s dick bounce around with the movement. 

Slowly, Harry repeats himself, “I _said_ that it’s up to you, but you’re welcome to sleep in the bed. The couch is shitty and old and uncomfortable to sit on, so I know it’s worse to sleep on. Just, um… I know you’re— _we’re_ —trying to keep some boundaries between us, so we can like, use different blankets? Sleeping bags? A year on that couch is going to kill your back, Lou.”

The only way he can speak is if he does it with his eyes closed. “I’ll think about it. Now, can you _please_ put on some actual clothes.”

Harry snickers into his hand and nods, but on his way out of the kitchen, he takes exaggerated, purposeful steps that intentionally jostle his cock, and Louis can’t help but look at it. When he passes Louis, Harry knocks their shoulders together and says, “Make tea?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Louis shakes his head and reaches for the cabinet where they keep the cups.

That night, Louis sleeps in the bed with Harry after a longer than probably necessary conversation outlining exactly how it’s going to work. In the end, they dig through the top of the closet and the boot of Harry’s car and underneath the bed until they find their sleeping bags and they go to sleep that night completely separate with the throw pillows from the couch lined up between them. 

When Louis wakes up the next morning, he’s alone and facing Harry’s empty side of the bed. He has a throw pillow cuddled to his chest and a sneaking suspicion that he’s missing something.

∞

A car horn sounds from right outside and Harry’s standing by the door, checking his pockets and putting on his coat. “Eric and Andy are picking me up so I don’t have to drive, and Emily said I can stay over, so I don’t know if I’ll be home or not.”

“You don’t, um… Thanks for telling me. Have fun and, um, be safe.” Louis holds up his hand and gives Harry a little wave before he disappears into the bedroom just in case Harry’s friends decide to come to the door. 

After the disaster that was his solo Christmas, Louis decides to spend New Years Eve sober. Which, oddly enough, is exactly what 2017 Louis decided as well. It’s stupid, but he mirrors his younger self again, and does nothing but watch sappy romcoms on Harry’s laptop until he can’t keep his eyes open. It’s after one in the morning, and Harry must’ve decided to stay at Emily’s, so Louis puts the laptop away, tosses the sleeping bags into the corner, climbs under the duvet, and falls asleep. 

A burst of cold air wakes Louis from a deep sleep, but before he can pull the duvet tight around him, the mattress is moving because a very drunk, naked-except-for-his-pants Harry has just fallen onto it. He flings the duvet over himself and scoots closer and closer until he’s only a few inches from Louis and they’re face to face.

“Lou,” Harry whispers and Louis can smell the alcohol on his breath. “You awake?”

“No,” Louis grumbles. He does _not_ want to deal with a drunk Harry philosophizing about who knows what. At least not when he’s trying to sleep. 

“Lewis, you’re not supposed to lie to me! Condition number one!”

“Shut up, Harry, oh my god. You reek of cigarette smoke and alcohol. Did you…” Louis can see him fine since he left the door open and the hallway light on. In fact, if he’s going to get any sleep, he’s going to have to get up and turn the lights off. He reaches his hand up, gently touches Harry’s hair, and it’s wet. Louis sniffs at it because who the fuck knows what Harry’s been up to all night, but it’s… “Is there champagne in your hair?”

“Probably. Someone… Someone shook up a bottle and sprayed it everywhere. Emily was so mad. And I kept laughing, so she said I couldn’t stay.” Harry sticks his lower lip out in a ridiculous pout, so Louis pinches it.

“How’d you get home? You didn’t drive in this state.”

“No, no, someone… There was…” Harry closes his eyes and for a second, Louis thinks he’s fallen asleep, but then he says, “Someone was sober and drove me home.”

“Good.”

Harry shakes his head and drops of champagne hit Louis’ face. “Not good.”

“Okay… Not good, then. Are you going to be sick?”

“Tomorrow. Not now…”

“Alright. It’s your hangover. Go to sleep, Harry.”

“’Kay. Night, Lou.” As soon as he’s asleep, Louis’ll head for the couch. Harry wiggles even closer and Louis probably should’ve anticipated it, but he’s half asleep still, and he’s nervous being this close to Harry, under the same blanket, with Harry in nothing but a tiny pair of briefs, but Louis is taken completely by surprise when Harry presses his champagne flavored lips against his, and murmurs, “Love you.” 

Louis remains frozen in place with his eyebrows halfway up his forehead, his heart about to leap out of his chest, holding his breath, and waiting to see if Harry immediately passes out. He does.

Carefully, Louis extracts himself from the duvet, grabs one of the sleeping bags, turns off all of the lights, and goes to sleep in the living room.

∞

Louis doesn’t mention it. There doesn’t seem to be a reason to bring it up when Harry stumbles out of the bedroom and into the bathroom and stays in there long enough that Louis finds himself knocking on the door to make sure he’s alright. Which he is. Just hungover. So Louis brings him water and paracetamol and leaves him alone with his hangover. 

Harry doesn’t mention it. Probably because he doesn’t remember it. And if he does, he’s pretending it never happened because, other than the bitching and complaining about his hangover, he seems the same. 

“Glad you had fun at your party,” Louis says, then worries for a second that Harry will ask about his own night in.

“It was alright. Never want to drink champagne again though.” Harry sticks his tongue out and manages to look adorable while also looking disgusted.

“Understandable.” 

“I, um…” Harry turns a little to face Louis on the couch, but then he looks down at his hands like he can’t hold eye contact and says, “I have to tell you something.”

Louis nods. Here it comes. He really thought Harry was too drunk to remember kissing him and, fuck, saying he loved him. Please don’t let it be awkward.

“Last night, um…” Harry finally looks up at him and rushes out, “I didn’t mean for it to happen, and like, I know that we aren’t a couple, but I just… I feel guilty.”

“Harry, it’s fine. You were drunk. It doesn’t have to mean anything.” It _doesn’t_ mean anything. It can’t.

“Did I tell you last night? I mean, Phillip’s cool, and I mean, he’s not a bad guy, right? But I wasn’t expecting him to kiss me at midnight. Was just surprising and, like I said, I feel guilty about it.” He gestures at the space between them and Louis watches his hand wave back and forth, trying to focus on the movement instead of the wave of confusion followed by sudden understanding.

Louis coughs and clears his throat. He forces down the jealousy that threatens to bubble over and ignores the part of his brain that’s jumping and shouting that Harry kissed _him_ last night, that Harry said he loves him _._ “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Are you mad?” Harry asks and he actually looks worried that Louis might be.

“No.” _Lie._ He’s mad, but not at Harry.

“What about the other Louis? My Louis? Would he be mad?”

“I… I think he’d probably be sad, Harry. I don’t want to talk about that—”

“Sorry. Sorry. I just felt like I had to tell you.”

They sit in silence for a moment. Harry’s fidgety and Louis is sweating even though it’s not warm at all. Finally, he gets to the point where he has to say something, so he asks, “Is he someone you want to date?”

“What? No! What?”

“I just thought… You said he’s cool. Why don’t you ask him out?” There’s probably something Louis can do to stop the things he keeps saying, like shut his mouth, for instance. Or leave the room. 

“I don’t… I’m not…” Harry huffs out a breath and crosses his arms, scowling at Louis from his end of the couch. “I hardly know him. I’m not going to ask him out. I don’t want to date anyone right now.”

Relief settles over Louis and he wonders if Harry can tell. But then he has to be sure, so he asks, “Because I’m here?”

“No, Lewis. It’s because I just got out of a long-term relationship and it ended badly and I’m kind of fucked up about it, okay?”

“Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine.” Harry turns away and leans his head back to look at the ceiling. “Let’s just drop it.”

∞

In mid-January, Harry doesn’t come home right after work one day and it throws Louis into a panic. When he realizes Harry is half an hour late, he makes himself a cup of tea as a distraction. He starts pacing the living room about an hour after Harry usually walks through the door. By the time Harry does get home, Louis is shaking and sweating and scared after running every possible negative scenario through his head.

“Where the hell have you been?” Louis shouts as soon as the door opens. Harry hasn’t even taken his key out of the lock before Louis is standing inches away from him pulling him into the flat with his hands on either side of Harry’s face.

“Sorry I’m late,” Harry tries to say, but it comes out muffled because Louis is holding so tightly to his jaw.

“Are you alright? What happened?” Louis finally releases his hold on Harry and steps back, now that the adrenaline rush that accompanied Harry’s arrival is fading, his embarrassment at his unnecessary worry has his stomach swirling.

“Nothing. Nothing happened. Sorry. I, um… I drove up to Leeds.”

“Leeds? Why?”

Harry starts to shrug his coat off and that’s when Louis notices the stack of papers in his hands.

“Um, well, it was slow at the bakery today, so after I cleaned _everything,_ I started thinking about what we talked about before.”

“Before when? We talk every day. About all sorts of things.”

“About my, you know… future.” Harry shuffles the papers in his hands and walks over to the kitchen table to sit down. “I figured Leeds is a city, right, so maybe I move there? I don’t know, but it’s not too far, so I just… drove there. To the University.”

“Oh. Did you…” Louis takes a deep breath and mentally pops the bubble of elation that floats up when he realizes that he’s glad Harry wasn’t with someone else. “What’d you think?”

“Not sure. I got some information. I’d rather have brochures to look at than go online, just feels more real to me, I guess. But I went to the library there and they had stuff for a bunch of schools, so I got…” Harry glances down at the stack of papers in his hands and shrugs. “I don’t know, I probably got a little carried away.” 

He lays them on the table and fans them out so Louis can see them. There are brochures for Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, and Bradford, plus at least half a dozen London Unis.

“What courses are you thinking?” Louis asks as nonchalantly as he can make himself sound, while he spins one of the London brochures around and around on the table, finally stopping and flipping it open. Chef Academy of London. “Patisserie and Bakery Course?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I got one on Leicester’s Physics and Space Science program for you. Thought you might miss it or something.” Harry rifles through the stack and slides one across the table to Louis. 

He does miss it. The engineering side of things, building, crafting, planning from tiny ideas to actually bringing something into reality. He misses it all the time. What he would never have expected is that he misses the other bits. The calculations, the theories, the equations, the maths. Predicting patterns and watching them play out. The computational side. The stuff that he always considered the stumbling block or the stepping stone that he had to get over before he could get to the fun part.

For someone who’s always said he doesn’t care for maths, he sure has the sudden urge to read up on whatever research Malik’s doing for his masters. Maybe he can pick something up, learn something, so that when he gets back to his own time, they’re on more even footing.

“Thanks, Harry, I… Well, I can’t exactly drive down to Leicester, but maybe there are online courses.”

“Maybe. I’m overwhelmed by the options here. There’s so much to look at.”

“Yeah, well, what do you _like?_ Start with that and go from there.”

Harry nods, then leans forward and rests his cheek on his hand. He walks his other hand across the table and pokes Louis’ knuckle. “Sorry if I worried you.”

“I hate not having a phone.”

“What if… Why don’t you set up an email account and then you could at least send me emails and I’ll get them on my phone. Not the same, but close?”

Louis shakes his head fondly and smiles. “You’ve always been the brains of this operation, Harry. I could’ve been sending you memes and grocery lists and annoying you with emails this whole time.”

“It wouldn’t annoy me. I like talking to you. Hearing from you. You know that.”

Louis does know, though he tries not to think about it. Every time Harry says something like that, something kind or sweet or sincere, Louis laughs it off or makes a joke or changes the subject. It’s bad enough that he has to live with Harry, sleep beside him every night, spend all of his time with him… He has to fight it because he can’t let on how easy it would be to fall back in love with him. 

It’d end badly. There’s no way around it. Because when Louis leaves in nine months, he’ll be gone for the next five years of Harry’s life. Five years that Harry hasn’t lived yet—Harry’s future—and neither of them know what’s coming. Louis can’t fall for Harry again when he knows it’ll end in heartbreak. 

Once was enough.

∞

After the idea is planted in his head, Louis can’t stop thinking about it. He misses his work, all of it, and so he starts studying. Some books he can get at the library, but most everything is easily found online. There are even classes available for free from MIT back in the states. Some of what he studies is review—the applied physics, especially, but most of the maths is new to him, and it surprises him how little he struggles with it.

When he was in school for his masters degree, he gave little attention to his maths classes. He did what he had to do to get a passing grade, but he didn’t focus, always procrastinated his work, and would cram to memorize formulas and equations right before exams and forget them as soon as he didn’t need them anymore. 

He throws himself into it and it’s fun, it takes up most of his day, and quite suddenly he goes from bored out of his mind and watching the seconds tick by, to the point where his days are flying past. It’s always dark before he realizes that he hasn’t eaten lunch, Harry comes home after work and surprises Louis almost every time he hears his keys in the lock. It’s probably annoying Harry to no end because Louis has easily slipped back into his default behaviors, the ones that come out when he’s busy: he stops cleaning up after himself, stops making their dinners. He’s just distracted. Why would he think about housekeeping when he’s reading up on Liam’s research at Syracuse and Zayn’s work at Leicester and Niall’s projects at Caltech and wondering how they all come together to invent time travel of all things. 

Because, that’s part of the mystery of it. He knows generally how it works, he knows the engineering part, the things they had to build for the Chrono Exploration Program. The table that was really no more than an operating table, and the hollow tube that everyone said looked just like someone plucked up a sewer pipe and dropped it off at NASA. Except that they were both made from an alloy meant to protect the Chrononauts from radiation exposure.

He was there when Niall gave his presentation on expanding primordial wormholes. Poor Niall was so nervous, he had no idea that Malik and Franklin already planned to bring him on. His research into wormholes was one of the most important parts of the program, that along with Liam’s work in superheavy elements, and Malik’s study of quantum field theory and exotic matter. 

Louis frowns while he looks through what he can find about Malik’s work because there’s nothing about exotic matter in any of it. His published papers are all related to boson particles and he mentions further research involving the Large Hadron Collider. And that’s not right. 

Of all of the things Louis wishes he paid closer attention to, Zayn Malik’s research career has never been on the list. He’s almost positive that Malik never went to Geneva to work with the particle collider because his focus, as far as Louis knows, has always been exotic matter. 

“Louis, what the fuck?” Harry’s standing in the doorway with his hands full of shopping bags and he looks pissed off, so Louis closes the laptop and forgets about Malik.

“What?” Louis asks, but then looks around at Harry’s sweeping gesture. The flat is a mess. There’s clean laundry piled onto the side of the couch that he’s not sitting on, his empty cup of tea is stacked on top of his old take-away container from lunch, and the dishes are still in the sink from the night before when Louis was supposed to make dinner, but got caught up reading and lost track of time, and Harry ended up cooking after Louis promised he’d clean up. “Sorry. I’ll do it now.”

He starts in the kitchen, and thankfully, Harry folds the laundry and puts it away while Louis does everything else, so they’re finished soon enough. 

“Harry?”

Harry grunts from behind the university brochure that he’s reading.

“Are you mad at me or something? I’m sorry about the mess.”

“No, no… I’m just…” Harry sighs and lets the brochure fall to his lap. “I’m tired of working at the bakery. I used to think I’d eventually learn more than just how to clean up the kitchen and work the till, but… I don’t even know if I want that anymore. I do get to do some of the baking, but it’s like… biscuits and muffins. It’s boring.”

“Well, you don’t have to do it, you know. There are probably two dozen brochures in there for different programs. What are you into?”

Harry huffs and tosses the brochure he was looking at onto the coffee table. It’s the one from the University of Leicester that he brought home for Louis. 

“You going to study physics?” Louis teases and plops down next to him.

“Was just curious what you’re reading all the time. It’s not like what you were studying when you were in uni.”

“Um… Okay, so top secret time travel stuff coming up. Let me know if you’d rather I shut up now.”

Harry shakes his head, so Louis fills him in on all of the new things he’s learned. About Niall’s research and Liam’s oddly-timed PhD program, Malik’s papers and hints at moving to Geneva for his doctorate, and then he tells him everything else. All of the work they did to build the tube itself, and the steps they took to finally open and stabilize a wormhole, and finally the experiments they ran and ran and ran in order to be able to safely transport objects to a specific set of time coordinates. 

“Wait… Why is this Malik person going to Switzerland if he’s supposed to be going to Florida?”

“I don’t know. He’s still at uni for now, but… I wonder what changes his mind. Like, what in the world happens to make him drop and walk away from his work on the particle collider? What makes him decide to research exotic matter? It’s such a niche field…”

Harry hums and stretches his legs out, propping his feet up in Louis’ lap. “You’re cooking tonight.”

“I know,” Louis says and starts to work the pads of his thumbs into the arch of Harry’s foot. There’s a chance he’s never going to drop this thing with Malik’s research. He doesn’t want to have to keep tabs on him, but he has to switch concentrations and he has to move to Florida and he has to work for NASA or Louis is going to be fucked.

Later the following week, Harry’s up at dawn even though he’s off work, and Louis finds him at the kitchen table with the laptop and Louis’ physics books spread out all around him.

When Louis walks into the kitchen to flip on the kettle, Harry nods, but doesn’t say anything, just keeps reading whatever he’s found interesting on his laptop.

Louis makes them both tea and joins him at the table, but Harry’s still quietly looking back and forth from books to brochures to his laptop without acknowledging Louis.

“Morning, what are you—”

“Lou, I think you have to go see this Zayn Malik person.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, I was reading more about what he’s working on and I found his Twitter too.” Harry points to his laptop and Louis scoots his chair around to peek at the screen while Harry scrolls. “He’s constantly tweeting about going to Geneva, Lou. Apparently, he went there a few years ago before he started at Leicester. He studied art, believe it or not.”

“I know… I mean, I didn’t know about Geneva, but I knew about the art thing. But I can’t go see him. I can’t fuck with the past, Harry. That’d definitely screw something up.”

“No, I think… Okay. Hear me out?”

Louis nods and sips his tea. Harry was never this into his own studies at uni and never cared much for Louis’ engineering courses. He isn’t sure he’s ever seen Harry this interested in anything before.

“Okay, so I was thinking about Christmas, right? And how I came home early on Boxing Day. I was worried the whole time I was driving that I was messing up time or something, but then I thought about it and I think… I think that all of this has happened already. Like, for you.” He punctuates his sentence by poking Louis in the arm.

“Right. I agree. Was there more?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I don’t think you get it. Basically, it doesn’t matter what you _do_ because you’ve _already done it._ I’m ignoring calls and texts from my Louis because you said I have to.” Harry raises his eyebrows as if Louis is going to try to argue that point with him. “I came home early on Boxing Day because of you and I’m thinking about uni and moving away and none of that would’ve happened if you weren’t here. So what I’m saying is that you need to go find this Zayn Malik person because that’s what you have to do.”

“I don’t…” Louis frowns and stirs his tea. “Why? I’m trying to be open to this idea, but I can’t just interfere with the past. I need to know what the purpose is.”

“You were looking into all the guys you work with, right? And most of it makes sense, most of it works for what you remember the future is like. Except Malik. You were asking, um… You wanted to know what was going to make him change the track of his master's.” Harry looks at him like he’s waiting for a response, so Louis nods and he continues, “The way you said it, it seemed like it had to be something huge. Something major has to happen to make him want to switch over to studying exotic matter. Right?”

“Yeah…”

_“You’re_ the something huge. _You’re_ the major thing that happens. You have to go find him and tell him what you know.”

It fits. The logic is slightly flawed, but it’s time travel. Logic doesn’t really apply here. More than that, it _feels_ right. Louis tries to imagine himself in Malik’s shoes—his polished wingtips—and then he tries not to roll his eyes. How would someone convince _him_ that this was all real? What would a perfect stranger have to do or say to Louis to make him believe that they were from the future? He’s not sure, but he’ll figure it out. He’s positive of that. Especially if, as Harry says, he’s done it all before.

“You’re a genius, Harry. I think you’re right.”

“Not a genius. It just makes sense. Doesn’t it?”

“I suppose. I mean, it definitely does, but… It’s like you have a special way of looking at things. This all seems logical to you, but I don’t think it ever would’ve occurred to me. Or any of the people I work with at NASA. This is like, I don’t know… Time Travel Logic. It’s different from what people typically consider logical behavior.” Louis nudges Harry’s arm, smiles, and leans in a bit. “This is a pretty big deal.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

∞

Louis waits until Harry’s in the bathroom, standing there shirtless in his black skinny jeans and boots, carefully shaving his face before he asks, “Where are your friends taking you out tonight?” 

It’s easier to hide the disappointment that he already feels about Harry’s birthday if he doesn’t have to worry about Harry reading the expression on his face. He can’t buy him anything, can’t take him out anywhere, can’t even bake him a cake because he knows the ladies at the bakery will do that. 

Harry wipes the foam off of his chin and double checks his face in the mirror before he answers, “Just to dinner, I think. Emily’s picking me up and Eric and Andy are meeting us. I don’t want to stay out too late.”

“Why not?” Louis asks and slides out of the way so that Harry can pass by him, then he follows him into the bedroom. “Didn’t you take tomorrow off?”

“Took the next three days off. But I worked this morning, so I’ve been up since half-three. I’ll be ready for bed after a few glasses of wine.” Harry opens his drawer full of t-shirts and pulls out a plain black one, then goes to the closet to rifle through his nicer shirts. Louis watches him from the doorway, but as soon as Harry turns around, he looks away. 

He used to do this all the time, in fact, it was almost a ritual for them when they’d go out. Go anywhere, really, because there were plenty of times that Louis watched Harry get dressed for work and then fell back asleep afterwards. Or laid on the bed and watched while he pulled on joggers and a hoodie to run out to the shops. But it’s a step down a path that is closed to him. Instead, he busies himself by unnecessarily straightening their sleeping bags on the bed and fluffing their pillows.

“It’s your birthday, though. You don’t want to—”

“Lou, thanks, but I’m… I’ll bring you leftovers.” Harry slips into his coat and jingles his keys, then peers behind the curtain. “Emily’s here. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Louis nods and waits by the door while Harry locks it. Twenty-two. It shouldn’t have taken him almost four months to realize that he’s almost a decade older than Harry. 

When they first got together, Harry made a big deal about the fact that Louis was two years older, though after a little while he stopped mentioning it as often. The few months between their birthdays, especially right after Christmas when Louis was temporarily three years older instead of two, were… Well, Harry would bring it up then. Repeatedly. And that always led to rather enthusiastic sex. Which was saying something considering that their regular sex life had never been boring. 

That was a hell of an adjustment when he moved to the states. Phone sex and Skype sex were an inadequate substitute, though he never complained about it to Harry, figuring he could only blame himself.

Louis sighs wistfully and sprawls across the couch on his stomach, letting his hand drag on the floor. That wasn’t the smartest trip down memory lane. 

For about an hour, he lies on the couch like that, alternating between thoughts of Malik—how to approach him, what to say or do to convince him just to listen—and thoughts of Harry, which he pushes aside as soon as he realizes what he’s doing, and forces himself to think of something else. Eventually, he gives up and takes a shower and wanks.

While he’s drying off, his mind drifts to Harry again, to his way of looking at time travel and Louis’ place in it. It’s simple to say that he’s done this all before, so he just has to do it again, and the way Harry talks about it, he expects Louis to do whatever seems like it needs to be done. But to what and how far does that extend? 

If he wants to go outside—which, at this point, he’d pay top dollar for an hour of doing nothing but laying on the pavement in front of the flat—does he just go outside? Fuck the consequences? Or does he plan it out like they’ve been talking about for their drive to Leicester? As it stands, it’s not much of a plan. It’s just Harry going out to start the car and making sure no one’s around before Louis darts out, jumps in the back seat, and lays down covered by a blanket, until Harry determines it’s safe for him to climb into the passenger seat.

Now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure Harry said all of that just to fuck with him because they’re planning on leaving early Saturday morning before any of their neighbors are typically awake. So, if Louis feels like he needs to just walk outside and not worry about being seen on their way to find Malik, then it should be fine because he’s done it before. He nods to himself, as if that solidifies the notion. 

With Harry’s laptop and a fresh cup of tea, Louis sits down at the kitchen table to make a list. On the left side of the paper, he writes down what he knows from 2023 about each of the guys he works with. On the right, he puts everything he’s found out so far that’s true about them in 2018. In between them, he lists all of the possibilities he can think of to get them all from point A to point B, including any interference from himself.

He needs to figure out the deal with Liam and why he’s in the wrong PhD program, but it won’t do any good until he finds Malik. Louis taps his pen against the table and chews his fingernails and tries to tell himself that _he’s done all of this before,_ so finding Malik will be easy and convincing him won’t take that much effort.

On a fresh piece of paper, he writes _I’ve done all of this before_ over and over again until there’s no space left and he’s writing over top of what’s there. In the back of his mind while he scribbles the words, he wonders if Harry kissed him on New Years Eve before. If Harry told him that he loved him before passing out cold before. If they spent almost a year sleeping together without touching before. If he fell in love with Harry again before. If his heart was irrevocably shattered when it was all over, once more.

Louis jerks awake to the sound of the door to the flat slamming shut. He apparently fell asleep at the table, his face is still stuck to a piece of paper, and he hopes there’s no ink on his cheek. The clock on the cooker shows just after midnight, so Harry’s definitely later than he said he’d be, but it’s not as though Louis has any claim on his time.

“Have fun?” Louis asks. He stands up and stretches his arms over his head and leans side to side, then starts to clean up the things he has spread out on the table.

“Yeah, it was alright, I guess. I, um… Well, Andy and Eric were late because they were arguing again. Emily and I waited at the bar for more than an hour, and then, when they finally showed, they had Phillip with them, so we had to get a bigger table…” Harry sighs and turns towards the couch, where he sits down heavily. He pushes a container onto the coffee table and says, “I brought you the rest of my steak.”

“Oh, thanks, yeah… I didn’t eat, so…” Louis sits next to him and opens the box. He’ll just eat it with his hands while he pretends not to hate every bit of the way this conversation has started. “Do you not like Phillip or…?”

Harry looks over at him and Louis hates that he can read his expression. He’s clearly worried about something, chewing on his lower lip like that. And he wonders if that little line between his eyebrows turns into a more permanent wrinkle by 2023. Harry finally lets his lip go and says, “He’s the guy from New Years. They all, um… They were trying to set me up with him tonight. He wasn’t in on it or I would’ve been back here immediately. It was just weird. And I’m not very happy with any of my friends right now.”

“It was okay, though?” Louis asks and hopes he hides his feelings about Phillip well enough. As if he didn’t remember him. “You had a decent time?” 

“Decent, yeah. He asked me out.” Harry eyes flicker up to meet Louis’ and back down to his hands in his lap. 

“Oh?” Louis’ voice goes high, then for some reason, he decides to keep talking, and, not only that, he claps his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “You should go out with him, mate.”

Harry clearly didn’t expect that. His eyebrows shoot up and he blinks owlishly for a few seconds. “Really?”

“I mean, sure, yeah. I think it’d be good for you to go on a date.” Louis takes a big bite of steak to keep himself from saying anything else. Mate. Honestly, he’s surprised he hasn’t called Harry ‘bro’ already.

“Are you… Are you dating someone?” Harry asks and it sounds like he surprised himself with the question. He combs his fingers through his hair and pulls on the ends and says, “I didn’t even think… I didn’t think to ask. Do you, um… have a boyfriend in, um…”

Louis shakes his head and whispers, “No.”

“I thought maybe that was why…” Harry pauses and narrows his eyes at Louis before continuing. “Right. Okay. I will then. I’ll just text him and let him know.” 

He stands up and pulls his phone from his back pocket, taps at the screen for a bit, then Louis hears the unmistakable whoosh of a message being sent. 

“First dates on Valentine's Day are a bit unusual, but maybe that’s what I need.” Harry drops his phone onto the coffee table and starts down the hall. A door shuts, a bit too loudly for the time of night, and a moment later Louis hears the shower turn on. 

He scrubs his hands down his face and lets out a little growl. Stupid moves all around today. From wanking to thoughts of Harry to trying to come up with excuses to convince himself it’d be alright if they messed around to trying to convince himself that that’s all it would be between them to telling Harry to go out with some other guy on Valentine’s Day. Also known as the anniversary of their own first date. 

As quickly as he can, he cleans up his food, turns off the lights, and climbs into his sleeping bag without brushing his teeth. He tries to fall asleep before Harry gets out of the shower, which he should be able to do considering he’s in there for a long while, but he can’t. Instead, he keeps his eyes closed and his breathing steady and pretends while Harry gets ready for bed. He has to know that Louis is faking. He certainly doesn’t try to be quiet—slamming drawers and turning the overhead light on instead of the lamp on his nightstand, and finally bouncing around on the mattress as if he needs to situate himself that much to get comfortable. 

It’s going to be a long two weeks to Valentine’s Day. He can only hope that the date goes badly. As he drifts off to sleep he wonders if he’s done all of this before too.

The days leading up to Harry’s date are worse than Louis imagined in some ways and better in others. The first day is bad. Things are icy between them from Harry’s end and standoffish and annoyed from Louis’ end. It’s not his fault this Phillip guy asked Harry out and he isn’t sure what he was supposed to say or what kind of reaction Harry expected from him when he told him about it in the first place.

It’s possible, probable even, that Harry was testing the waters and trying to see if Louis would be jealous, but he _can’t_ be jealous when _his_ Harry broke up with him six years ago. He’s had all of this time to get over the end of their relationship. The fact that he actually _is_ jealous is irrelevant. 

After the first day, Louis expects Harry to give him the silent treatment indefinitely, but on Saturday morning, he wakes up to a somewhat normal Harry. Which shouldn’t be unsettling, but it is. They’re careful around each other, very polite, almost like brand new flatmates who hardly know each other. 

Harry makes them tea in travel cups and doesn’t say anything when Louis simply pulls the hood of his sweatshirt forward to shield his face, walks to the car and climbs in the passenger seat. Grumbling to himself, Harry backs out of the driveway.

The ride to Leicester is about an hour and a half, which they spend not speaking, but thankfully at least they have Harry’s phone and they can agree on some music. It’s definitely not a comfortable silence though. Louis chews his nails the whole way, tries to ignore the churning in his stomach, and triple checks that he has all of his notes and everything else that he thinks he might possibly need when he talks to Malik. Harry won’t let him say _if_ he talks to Malik because he says it’s already happened and Louis isn’t about to argue with him.

There aren’t any master’s level physics classes that meet on Saturdays, but Harry seems sure that Malik will be easy to find because he has a habit of tweeting throughout the day and every single Saturday since he’s been in the space science course, he’s tweeted about spending the day working in the library. Louis isn’t clear if this means that he actually works there or if he means that he’s studying instead, but he figures they’ll find out when they get there.

Harry maneuvers his car into a space near the entrance, climbs out, and walks through the entry doors without waiting for Louis to gather his things. He still has his seatbelt on. 

Louis fumbles with the buckle, almost drops the stack of books and papers he’s had in his lap the whole way, curses himself for not asking Harry for a bag or something to put everything in, and trips when he tries to step up onto the pavement, almost losing his grip on everything again. By the time he makes it through the library entrance, he’s red-faced, sweaty, and angry. 

Harry’s a good twenty feet in front of him and he’s not slowing down, so Louis hurries to try to catch up. It seems like Harry has some idea of where he’s going, or maybe he’s just doing this to torture Louis because he bypasses the lifts and starts up the stairs. Louis pauses at the bottom for a second and scowls at Harry’s back, then he climbs the stairs behind him. 

When Louis finally steps off the last stair onto the fourth floor, he’s sure that Harry’s fucking with him because, on the second floor he walked all the way across the library to another set of stairs and started up those and now he’s heading back in the other direction. Louis can’t see any valid reason for him to do that. At least he’s still in good shape from all of his training at NASA, plus all of the push-ups and squats and shit that he does at the flat to distract himself. He hasn’t been on a treadmill in months, but other than that he feels alright. Just annoyed.

Louis finally catches up to him halfway across the fourth floor. “Where to now?” He keeps his voice low since they’re in a library, but he hopes he gets across how pissed off he is. 

Harry looks back over his shoulder, rolls his eyes, and just keeps walking. 

They pass a row of tables and Louis can’t help but notice that they’re all completely empty. No one is up here. “Harry, I’m not doing this. I’m not following you anymore until you talk to me.” 

After a few more steps, Harry stops and turns around, crosses his arms and taps the toe of his boot against the hard floor. “Around the corner up there is a little alcove and I think that’s where he is.”

“Why in the world would you think that?”

“Because, Louis, I told you that he tweets about the library every Saturday. And he’s posted pics a few times too, of this courtyard from above, and I’m positive that he has to be up here.”

“Oh.”

Harry nods once then starts walking again, but a bit slower this time and Louis catches up to him easily. They round the corner and there’s a short hallway with a few tables, but only the one in the alcove on the very far end is occupied. And it’s not Malik. Louis grabs Harry’s elbow and whispers, “It’s not him. Let’s go.”

Harry frowns and looks down at Louis’ hand on his arm. “You can’t even see his face. How would you know?”

“I can see his _arm,_ Harry. That’s enough.” It’s absolutely _covered_ in tattoos. Louis can’t tell what any of them are from the distance, but there’s hardly an inch of skin that isn’t inked. 

“Whatever.” Harry shakes off Louis’ hand and keeps walking, leaving Louis with no real choice but to follow. When he reaches the table, Harry turns and Louis rolls his eyes when he sees the smile on his face. It’s his second best smile, the one with dimples and too many teeth, and he leans down a bit and says, “Hi, um… You don’t know me, but my name’s Harry Styles. You’re Zayn Malik, aren’t you?”

Louis’ mouth drops open when the guy nods and shakes Harry’s hand. There is no way that’s Malik. Buttoned up, lab coat, shiny shoes, arrogant, possible (but unproven to Louis, at least) genius Malik doesn’t have tattoos. And he doesn’t have a pink streak in his hair either.

“What?” Louis asks when they both turn towards him and he can finally see the guys face. Malik’s face. 

With the same tone of voice he’s heard him use on Louis’ youngest siblings, Harry says, “Louis, this is Zayn Malik. I was just telling him how impressed you were with his latest published paper and he said—”

“That I’ve never met a fan before,” Zayn finishes Harry’s sentence, stands up and extends his hand to Louis, who obviously has to shake it. His mum would kill him if he didn’t. “Nice to meet you, Louis.”

Louis nods because he can’t think of anything to say other than the word _tattoos_ because it’s repeating inside his head and he wonders if this is something he’s done. If, by hopping back too far, Louis somehow managed to screw up something and change Malik’s… propensity for body modification. There’s a hoop in his nose and a bar in his eyebrow and Louis thinks he might pass out.

So he sits down. 

Across from Malik at the table, he can see for sure that it’s him. Not some long lost twin or something like that. Just him. There’s a scar on the back of his hand that Louis remembers noticing whenever Malik would give one of his self-congratulatory speeches in the break room. Liam and Niall would always fall over themselves to listen to him, but Louis would block out his voice and focus on his tea and what he convinced himself was the one physical flaw Malik possessed. 

There’s no time to waste thinking about tattoos. Louis has probably thrown away five minutes already, but it’s not like he can lead off with the subject of time travel.

“I found your last paper on Boson particles interesting,” Louis says and nods at Harry, silently thanking him for bringing it up. “Have you ever thought about applying your work in quantum field theory to exotic matter?”

Malik shakes his head. “Nah, man, not much into strictly theoretical. The collider is amazing. They’re doing great work up there. Hopefully, I’ll be doing my own research and experiments there after graduation.”

Louis nods because it’s not as if he’s going to convince Malik to jump on board the time travel express right away. It’s going to take effort. And time. Hopefully not too much.

They discuss Malik’s latest paper, the collider, some of his newer research which he only talks about in vague terms, which is understandable. And Louis talks to him about the engineering work that he read about on the collider, as well as the maths he’s been studying on his own every day when Harry goes to work at the bakery. 

Harry watches them the whole time. Louis can see him out of the corner of his eye and he’s so focused on the topic at hand. He seems to love it and it makes Louis stupidly proud, not that he has any right. 

They’re just about to finish up and say their goodbyes, Louis is trying to work up the courage to ask Malik for his email or his number so they can keep in touch, when Harry, who’s been relatively quiet, asks, “What about the idea about supersymmetric theories that you put forth in your paper? Couldn’t you apply that to exotic matter?”

“I…” Louis starts, but trails off, staring at Harry’s earnest expression. 

Malik hums and taps his fingers on the tabletop. “Maybe. I don’t know much about it, but it’s an interesting thought. Are you in an MPhys course?”

Harry shakes his head. “Just read what he studies sometimes. Got to keep up my end of the conversation.”

“Yeah… You should think it over,” Malik says.

“Maybe. I find it fascinating, really.” Harry reaches up to pinch on his lower lip and says, “All of the theoretical bits. But I might be more interested in the experimental side of things, I think.”

Malik nods his understanding and it’s clear that their conversation has petered out. They end up exchanging email addresses and Louis convinces Harry to take the lift down, so he decides to call the day a win, even though things are almost immediately awkward again between them as soon as Malik is gone. In the car, Harry goes back to icily ignoring Louis’ presence and Louis grumbles to himself, but they don’t argue, which is a relief. Louis has enough on his mind as it is. 

After an hour, he has to say something out loud. “He has so many tattoos!”

“You have tattoos, Lou.”

“That’s not what I mean. The Malik I know _does not_ have tattoos. He’s such a… a…” Harry looks over at him and Louis says, “He has a conservative way of dressing.”

That pulls a laugh out of Harry and Louis smiles back at him. Harry hums and fiddles with the radio, finally turning it off when he decides there’s nothing he wants to listen to. “Zayn seems pretty cool. I don’t know why you dislike him so much.”

“He’s… He’s not like that at all at NASA. If he was, we’d be friends, for sure. No, he’s always been cold to me. Kind of a dick, but not in an obvious way? So I can’t call him out on it. Something changes. Or something changed. The _Zayn_ I know is _not_ covered in tattoos. I can’t even… I never call him by his first name. He’s Malik to me at NASA.”

Louis looks over and Harry’s focusing on the road, but he’s worrying his lower lip, so Louis gives him a second to think before he speaks. That second turns into a minute, and those keep piling up until they’re back at the flat. 

It isn’t until they’re in bed that night—bundled into their separate sleeping bags—that Harry says, “How much does Zayn know? That’s a question I didn’t consider before. And how much do you tell him?”

Louis sighs and stares at the ceiling in the dark. So many questions. And none of them have concrete answers. Harry’s asleep before Louis can respond, though he doesn’t know what he’d say anyway. 

∞

With their focus on their meeting with Zayn, the next couple of weeks pass by without a single argument, which is surprising. Louis really expected at least one more heated discussion before Harry’s date because he knows that Harry’s still angry. It’s not as thought Louis wants Harry to go out with Phillip, especially on Valentine’s Day. 

He knows what that day means to Harry because even all of these years after their break-up, the entire month of February is pretty much the worst. He thinks of Harry more during those four weeks than he probably does during the other forty-eight. And Valentine’s Day is an especially sore subject. Niall gave him a heart-shaped box of chocolates one year and Louis stared at the package in his hand for so long, without moving, that Niall snatched it back without a word. 

It’s not even a weekend, Valentine’s falls on a Wednesday and Harry starts getting ready for his date as soon as he gets home from the bakery that afternoon. He soaks in the bathtub for so long that, at one point, Louis thinks he might have fallen asleep and knocks on the door to check on him. Harry’s snotty “What?” is all the answer he needs, so he sets himself up on the bed with Harry’s laptop. There’s an email from Zayn, so Louis replies to that, and then he settles in to watch _The Office_. 

Halfway through an episode that he’s seen at least twice before, he hears the tub emptying and then the shower turning on, and about the time the next episode starts, Harry enters the bedroom naked with a towel wrapped around his head.

“Jesus, Harry. Put on some pants.” Louis squeezes his eyes shut tight because the last thing he wants to see right now is Harry’s dick. It’s bad enough seeing him walk around the flat with nothing but a pair of worn joggers falling off of his hips. He peeks out through his eyelashes and he’s still standing there, hands on his hips, slight scowl on his face.

“Fuck off. It’s my bedroom.” Harry turns away and Louis frowns at his back while he digs through his drawer. Before he can turn back around, Louis forces himself to focus on the episode playing on the laptop right in front of him. “Besides, what do you think I’m doing?” 

Louis lifts his eyes from the screen just in time to see Harry pulling pale pink satin and lace up his thighs. His eyes almost fall out of his head and a strangled grunt gets stuck in his throat, as he slams the laptop shut, shoves it to the side, clambers out of the bed, then he rushes out of the bedroom and slams the door. 

He goes straight to the kitchen and chugs two glasses of water back to back, then flops backwards onto the sofa. Since he left the laptop on the bed, he picks up one of his books and starts reading. And reading. He reads section after section about wormhole theory and black holes and wormhole engineering and exotic matter until he thinks his head might explode, but at least his dick is distracted. His heart, on the other hand… 

Chances are that Harry is just fucking with him. Chances are that Harry still doesn’t want to go on his date with Phillip. Chances are that Harry will wear his absolute best (read: worst) date outfit anyway. 

When Louis hears the muffled ring of Harry’s phone from behind the bedroom door, and then the sound of a car pulling up outside, he sits up and starts to get up to go hide in the bathroom so Phillip won’t see him. But the bedroom door opens and Harry says, “I told him to wait in the car.”

Louis sits there and watches him slide his coat on and adjust his hair, and he can’t move. As Harry walks outside, he turns around and tells Louis not to wait up just before he closes the front door. 

He was right. Harry is wearing exactly what he predicted. Seeing it in his memory is nowhere near the same as seeing it in person though. And underneath that sheer black shirt and those tight black jeans he’s hiding the baby pink satin and lace boyshorts that Louis gave him for their third anniversary, the last Valentine’s Day that they were still together. He’s never even seen them in person until today. He ordered them online and had them shipped straight to Harry, who put them on immediately and Skyped him right away. 

Louis falls to the side, rolls over onto his stomach, groans, and presses his face into the seat cushion of the sofa. He stays there until he has to pee, and after that, he goes to the bedroom to sulk. And wank. He’s long since given up the idea that he can live with Harry and sleep next to Harry and, for fuck’s sake, see Harry’s cock covered in pink satin and lace without fantasizing about him too. 

He manages to _not_ get drunk while Harry’s gone on his date. It’s a hard sell, he thinks about it for a while before deciding that he should probably be sober in case he needs to go pick Harry up if anything goes wrong. And then he hates himself a little bit for being so responsible and for caring so much, but he can’t help it. He loves Harry. 

It’s a shocking revelation that he spends the rest of the evening trying to deny. 

He’s still sitting there on the couch when he hears Harry fumbling with the key outside, so he gets up, unlocks the door, and opens it. Harry’s still holding onto his key which is stuck in the lock, and he practically falls through the door and onto Louis.

“Alright, baby?” It just slips out, but maybe Harry didn’t notice. 

Harry shoves Louis’ shoulder and brushes past him, struggles to get out of his coat, but won’t let Louis help him, gets his keys caught in his hair somehow, and all the while keeps up a grumbling conversation with himself that Louis can’t quite make out. Finally, he extricates himself from his coat, untangles his hair from his keys, throws everything down on the floor and points a shaky finger at Louis.

“Don’t say that.”

“What?” Louis hasn’t said anything while Harry’s been stomping around in circles, but as soon as the word leaves his lips, he knows what Harry’s talking about. 

“You don’t call me _baby._ Not your _baby._ You… You… You absolute wanker. Can’t even bring anyone home with me because of you.”

“You weren’t going to bring him here,” Louis says dismissively. Because he knows that. Harry didn’t sleep with _him_ until their third date. There’s no way he was planning to have sex with _Phillip._

“I was. His roommate has a bunch of people over or we would’ve gone there.” Harry swings his arms wide and spins around in a circle. “And _you’re_ here. So you know what?”

“No.” Louis tries to contain his eye roll, but he’s already past being annoyed. Thinking about and trying not to think about Harry on a date all night has irritated the hell out of him. “What?”

“Next time I have a date, you have to leave. Go be somewhere else so I can bring him here.” Harry makes a shooing motion with his hands, then sits down heavily on the couch and starts taking off his boots.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Louis widens his stance, crosses his arms and looks down at Harry. “You shouldn’t be… I don’t think you really want to fuck that guy anyway.”

“Yeah? Well, _I do._ I need to get laid. It’s been far too long and, to be honest…” Harry struggles with his boot and finally pulls it off and tosses it across the room, then he shrugs. “Same old, same old for years, you know? Gets stale. And it’s been just me and my hand for a while now, so—”

“Fuck you, Harry.”

“No, Louis, that is _precisely_ the problem. You don’t want to, but Phillip does. There’s no reason not to. He’s single, I’m single. And from the way he was kissing me and—”

“He kissed you?” Louis asks, but he’s not sure why. He doesn’t want to know about this.

“Yes. I said—”

“He shouldn’t kiss you.”

Harry stops and watches him for a second, then he asks, slow and steady, “Why not? Why shouldn’t he?”

Louis turns his head away and stares down the hall. He has no claim over Harry. No right to be upset or jealous. Harry can kiss whomever he wants, have sex with whomever he wants. Louis feels his face grimace at the thought.

“You’re mad, Lou. Why?”

Louis closes his eyes and shakes his head quickly, then takes in a slow breath to try to calm himself down. It’s not working.

“Tell me why you’re angry. Tell me right now why you don’t want me kissing or dating or fucking—”

“Because I’m jealous, okay?” Louis spits out and finally opens his eyes to look down at Harry sitting on the couch and staring up at him. “I know you already know. I know you’ve known that I’m jealous. I can’t help it! I hate seeing you going out on a date with someone who isn’t me. I really hate that you wore that fucking underwear for someone else. I hate the thought of you with anyone. But it doesn’t matter.” He shakes his head and looks away, wishing he could disappear. 

“Sure it does.” Harry reaches up, lightly grips Louis’ folded arms, and squeezes. “Your feelings matter.”

“They don’t. Not when I can’t be with you.”

“You can though. You know I didn’t wear those lacy things for Phillip.” Harry drops his hands to his lap and pulls the waist of his jeans down so that the black elastic of his briefs shows. “They were for you. I took ’em off as soon as you slammed the door earlier.”

Louis presses his hands to his eyes and sighs. “We can’t be together. For a million reasons. I’m sorry.”

“Fine.” Harry stands up and stalks toward the bedroom, returning a moment later with Louis’ sleeping bag and pillow. “You can stay out here tonight. I don’t want you spooning me in your sleep tonight.”

“I don’t—”

“Every single night, Lou.” Harry drops the sleeping bag and pushes the pillow into Louis’ chest. “I wake up every morning with you holding me like that and I get up every day and shove a pillow into your arms so that you won’t know. Because you don’t want that. I… I… I’m going to bed.” 

Louis’ mouth falls open and he watches Harry disappear behind the bedroom door. He can’t believe his body has been betraying him like that.

A million reasons that they can’t be together, and the first one is that Louis isn’t supposed to interfere with anything while he’s in the past. But so much of his reluctance is due to his own broken heart. It’s something that he’s learned to live with over the last six years, and part of the process of getting to the point where he’s felt okay with the situation, has been laying at least part of the blame at Harry’s feet. Not that he’s made Harry completely responsible, but that they were equally at fault for what happened to their relationship. At least, intellectually, Louis is aware of this. Emotionally, it’s another story. Because Harry hurt him. Harry abandoned him. And even though he knows the truth now, he can’t let go of those feelings. Especially when 2018 Louis is experiencing it all for the first time.

∞

In his effort to somehow convince Malik to switch his concentration over to exotic matter, Louis spends more and more time researching on his own. His days of napping and watching Netflix and being bored morph into days spent treating Malik like his job. 

They email each other at least once a day, though typically they’re back and forth from morning until long after Harry gets home from work. Louis uses all of Harry’s paper. All of it. And ends up begging Harry to buy him a stack of spiral notebooks so he can keep his work in some semblance of an order. He’s always hated maths in general, but it’s growing on him, he just needs to be able to do it with a pencil. Of course, that leaves him taking pictures of his work with Harry’s laptop and emailing those to Malik to look over. 

Which he does. He’s nothing if not patient with Louis and he’s even more so with Harry when he offers his thoughts on whatever they’ve been working on. Sometimes Harry’s opinions lead them down another path and they end up emailing back and forth until Malik insists on going to bed. Louis refuses to Skype with him and he tells him it’s because he’d rather work things out by himself and wait for Malik’s opinion and that he likes to read over the emails again and again in case he misses something, but it’s really because it freaks Louis out to see Malik’s face. And to call him Zayn. He’s trying though.

It’s early March when Harry suggests that they go back down to Leicester Saturday to spend the day working at the library with Zayn. The drive isn’t as uncomfortable as it was the last time, but it’s not as easy as it could be. Louis knows it’s his fault, but he doesn’t know how to be around Harry anymore. It’s almost six months since he hopped too far back into the past and found himself on Harry’s doorstep, but things are more strained between them than ever. 

Harry’s polite. He’s kind. But that’s it. He treats Louis the same way he’d treat anyone else whom he didn’t really like but was forced to get along with. They don’t really have fun together anymore and he won’t even sit next to Louis on the couch for the duration of a film now. His smiles rarely reach his eyes and the only time he seems excited about anything is when he talks to Zayn on the phone. Because they do that now. Once or twice a week, Harry will call him with questions about some formula or theorem that he’s read about, even though he could easily ask Louis. Every now and then, his mask will slip and he’ll grant Louis a genuine smile or even a laugh, but he always catches himself and it disappears.

It isn’t what Louis wants, and he has to remind himself almost constantly that he can’t have what he wants. And he’s getting to the point where he thinks that the rest of his year spent with Harry is destined to be stiff and uncomfortable and just sad. Sometimes he wonders if he’s done all of this before, and if so, how he came out in the end. If Harry truly ends up hating him, if he breaks both of their hearts again, or if it’s just his own that gets destroyed this time. 

Malik is happy to have them in the little alcove on the fourth floor of the library, especially Harry who asks interesting questions and runs to get them books when they need them or brings them tea. And Louis is happy because Harry’s being nicer to him than he has in weeks. Sure, it’s only because it would be obvious if he didn’t do the same favors for Louis as he does for Zayn. Because he’s Zayn now. By the end of the day spent sitting across from each other at the same table, Louis finds that he even thinks of him as Zayn now. That’ll be uncomfortable when he gets back to 2023.

On their way out of the library, Harry asks Zayn to join them for dinner, his treat, so they all pile into Harry’s car. They end up at Nando’s because Zayn doesn’t want to cost Harry any money and it’s close by and they’re all really hungry. 

Louis opens the door and lets Zayn and then Harry go inside and he follows, resting his hand on Harry’s lower back out of some sort of muscle memory or ingrained habit. Thankfully, Harry doesn’t mention it, but he does make sure to sit down across from Louis and not beside him. 

Still, Zayn asks, almost as soon as they sit down, “How long have you two been together?”

At the same time that Harry says, “Four years,” Louis starts to say, ‘Oh, we’re not.’ He only gets the first word out before Harry kicks him under the table.

“Yeah. I thought so. You guys seem to know each other. Fit together well.”

Harry nods and says, “Thanks, Zayn.”

Louis is too busy rubbing his shin to respond. They eat without much conversation and when they’re done, Louis gets up to refill his drink. When he gets back, he slides into the seat beside Harry instead of making Zayn move in. 

“So, I noticed your tattoos,” Harry says, sounding _not at all_ nonchalant.

“Yeah?” Zayn asks and raises one eyebrow. Louis is already embarrassed and the conversation hasn't even taken place yet. “You’ve both got ’em too. They’re good. I like ’em.” 

Zayn nods at Louis and his hand comes to his chest where his clock tattoo is. Not that anyone can see it. Not that anyone _has_ seen it, other than the boys when they got them, and Harry. And a few… other people. But they don’t count. 

They start for the car, all three of them pulling on their jackets or hoodies against the cold. Louis holds the door again, but is careful not to touch Harry, then follows them outside.

“I’ve got more that you can’t see.” Zayn turns around and pats at his chest and stomach and says, “And a few in the works. Planning on a hand tattoo. And there’s something I want on the back of my neck.”

Louis nods and hums noncommittally and tries not to stare because he’s just noticed that, in his hoodie with it zipped up, Zayn’s tattoos are completely concealed.

He offers Zayn the passenger seat and squeezes in behind them, but he’s quiet while they drive him back to his car, only speaking when he’s directly addressed, otherwise keeping silent. His mind is a mess. 

They drop him back off in the library car park, and even then Louis remains fairly quiet. They’re almost all of the way home when he finally asks, “Did you notice his tattoos?”

“What? Yeah, we were talking about them for a while, Lou.”

“No, I mean, they’re all easily concealable. Put him in a long sleeve, button down shirt, and they magically disappear. Except for those hand and neck tattoos he’s planning on.”

“That’s— Wait. That’s true. Why would he…”

“Not sure. I, um… I have an idea, but I think… I’d like your opinion.”

“Yeah, sure. What is it?”

“You keep saying that I’ve done all of this before, right?”

“Yeah… Oh… Shit.”

Louis doesn’t say anything. He wants Harry to let it soak in and then he wants to see where he takes it. He watches Harry drive, squeezing the steering wheel, frowning and biting his lip, for a few minutes.

“Fuck. Okay. Fuck.” Harry shakes his head and says, almost with complete surety, “He knows you. He’s going to go work for NASA and meet 2018 you, but he’ll have already met this you.”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“It fits.” Harry nods and stares at the road ahead.

They don’t speak for the rest of the drive and when they get back to the flat, they go about their evening routine in contemplative silence. They’re laying in bed that night before either of them speaks again.

Louis whispers into the dark, “I have to tell him the truth.”

∞

One of the ladies at the bakery broke her ankle tripping over her Chihuahua, so Harry’s been working longer shifts and more hours in general. Six out of seven days, he’s there, and part of that time is actually spent in the kitchen, learning how to make everything. They’ve hired a kid to work the till on the weekends and they make do the rest of the time. It’s not ideal, but they manage, and the customers are patient and understanding. 

Louis misses him, but he doesn’t mention it. Instead he tries to fill his time, and he’s successful. He wants to talk to Niall and Liam, bounce some ideas off of them and not just Zayn and Harry. Sometimes he feels like there’s something lurking just outside of his peripheral vision, but when he turns to catch it, it’s gone. It’s driving him crazy because it feels like it’s important, but he doesn’t know how to capture it long enough to see it. 

His email exchange with Zayn continues, and more often than not, they talk about exotic matter, but it’s in a theoretical this-is-just-for-fun way because Louis is afraid to cross that line. He knows he needs to be honest with Zayn. It’s the only way he’ll get back to his own time. At least, he thinks so. But as much as Louis likes the impersonality of email, he knows he needs to talk to Zayn in person for this.

With Harry working all of the time, Louis will have to go alone. He finally decides to just drive down to Leicester one Saturday in early April to meet Zayn at the library. Harry says that he’ll get a ride home if Louis drops him off at the bakery, so he takes him to work and heads straight down to see Zayn. 

They spend the morning reading quietly, sitting across the table from each other. Louis checks and rechecks some of his work, reads over the latest from California on expanding wormholes, and pretends that he’s not about to talk about some off the wall sci-fi shit.

Louis pushes one journal aside. The article inside is about the new elements on the periodic table and the stable superheavy metal that they’re predicting will occur within the next ten or so elements. It hits too close to home, but without any new information, and it only makes Louis miss Liam and Niall, and then that leads to worrying about their hops and whether they made it to their destinations. He scowls at it once more and Zayn happens to look up and catch him when he does it.

“What’d that physics journal do to you?” Zayn picks it up and flips through to the back, then opens the contents page and scans it. “Oh, this… He’ll like this. I’ll have to email Liam.”

“Who?” Louis sits up straight in the uncomfortable wooden chair he’s been in for most of the day so far. 

“Oh, friend of mine. Known him since I stayed with his family when I studied abroad in the states for a year before uni.” Zayn waves the journal around, then lays it flat in front of him to snap a picture with his phone. 

“Where?” There’s a buzzing in Louis’ ears and he’s pretty sure it’s his blood pressure. 

“Hmm?” Zayn taps the screen of his phone and sends the picture of the physics journal off to some satellite where, presumably, it will bounce around until it lands with his friend Liam. Which is a perfectly normal, if not common, name. “Oh, Li? Yeah, he’s from upstate New York. At Syracuse now for aerospace engineering, I think? But he’s into this shit. Like how Harry’s into physics. Loves it, but it’s not his focus.”

Louis is speechless. Absolutely speechless. This is… not right. Zayn and Liam aren’t _friends._ They don’t _know_ each other. They both… just happen to join NASA at the same time. Coincidence. Except that Louis isn’t stupid and he knows that’s his Liam that Zayn is talking about.

He takes two deep breaths. One for oxygen, because he thinks he forgot to breathe for a bit there. And another one to give himself a second to gather his wits about him. A third deep breath and he must sound like he’s hyperventilating because Zayn looks up at him, clearly concerned.

“I have to tell you something,” Louis says and it comes out steady. He doesn’t sound nervous or scared or crazy. 

Zayn just nods at him and gestures for him to go on.

“Okay, well, first of all, we’ve known each other for a few months, so remember that. I… um, okay. I work for NASA.” Louis looks up at him and holds his gaze steady.

“Really? What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Um…” Louis bites his lip and tries to get the words in order inside his head. 

“Are you trying to recruit me?” Zayn chuckles and sits back in his chair.

“Sort of? I don’t have any kind of… power there. But I do know some people who do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and I think they’d love to have you.” Louis nods knowingly. Maybe he doesn’t need to tell Zayn anything more. “If you switch your study to exotic matter.”

“Nah, man. It’s dead end science. Not interested.”

Fuck. Okay. “Alright. I want to tell you… kind of a story. True story though.”

Louis tells him about the shuttle engineering program that he started out working on, then he tells him everything. They both have pens and paper out on the table and Louis keeps doodling whenever he gets anywhere close to the mention of actual time travel. He draws lines and squares and circles and eventually a little clock. 

Most of what he says, he knows comes across as theoretical because for the longest time, it was. He never flat out says that he’s actually from the future. After hearing how unbelievable those words sounded coming out of his mouth when he explained everything to Harry, he’d rather just keep hinting heavily.

“So, I’ve worked there at NASA for seven years,” Louis says it like it’s just extra information tacked onto the end. Like it doesn’t matter at all, when it’s the most important thing he’s said all day.

Zayn points his pen at Louis with a smirk. “You just said that you started there about a year and a half ago.”

“Yeah. I did. I started there in January 2017, I was twenty-three years old. I turned thirty in December.”

“Nah, man. Good try though.” Zayn rests his forearms on the table and grins at him. “You had me going with the NASA bullshit.”

Louis laughs, too loudly for the library, and it sounds hollow to his own ears, but he can’t hold it in. Of course he thinks it’s a joke. Who wouldn’t? “Right? I thought I had you all the way. So I jumped back through time and I landed wrong. Was supposed to land this coming October, but I was a year off. Not sure why exactly, though I’d love to blame Harry, but…”

Zayn nods along and snickers appropriately at the funny bits and Louis just tells him the absolute truth. He say the words time travel more than once and there’s no gasping, shocked reaction. Because it’s that ridiculous that there’s no way anyone will ever believe him and he feels close to tears at that realization. 

The pen in Zayn’s hand moves over the paper and Louis watches it. His mindless doodles would take Louis all day just to trace over. He’s talented. The art courses weren’t a bad road for him if he actually decided to go that way. Swirls and circles and lines and Louis focuses on the tip of the pen until his eyes start to blur.

“Your tattoos… D’you draw any of ’em?” Louis asks without looking up from the paper.

“Mmhmm. Most of ’em. Did some for a couple of friends too. Why? You want me to draw you one?” Zayn asks with a bright smile and drops his pen onto the table. He stretches his arms overhead and Louis can’t stop staring at the paper in front of him. It’s upside down, but he actually recognizes it better that way.

“Yeah, um…” Louis coughs and looks up at the ceiling and thinks _I’ve done all of this before._ “When we were working for the Chrono Exploration Program we—”

“That’s such a geeky name. Who came up with it?”

“You did, Malik. I told you. You’re one of the lead scientists.” Louis tries to keep his voice light, but he can hear the faint desperation. He clears his throat. “So we realized… It was this coming August, actually. We had a major breakthrough. Construction was almost finished on the facilities in the states and Australia and here, up in Donny, but we were stuck… This one theorem… And it was because we kept taking gravity into account… And…”

“This is so detailed, mate. I love it.”

“We wanted to celebrate, like mark the occasion with tattoos. One of the guys—funny enough, his name’s Liam—he got a friend of his to design our tattoos, right?” Louis stands up from his chair and, while he lifts his shirt, he keeps talking. “This is mine.”

Even without looking at him, he knows that Zayn sees it. Knows that he recognizes it as his own artwork. It’s the fucking sketch on the notepad right in front of him, but it’s tattooed on Louis’ chest. And it’s obviously not new.

“What the fuck? What… How… What the fuck…” 

Louis drops his shirt down, ready to explain further, but the look on Zayn’s face is anything but amused or curious. He’s shoving his things into his bag, not looking at what he’s doing, just sweeping things off of the table.

“I gotta… I have to…” He turns and sprints off out of the alcove, leaving Louis standing there in his dust.

Louis stands there for a few seconds, then the reality of what’s happening hits him. He can’t let Zayn go. He glances down at the table, but Zayn took everything. None of Louis’ notebooks are there, just the piece of paper with the sketch of the three clocks. He shoves it into his pocket while he runs. 

Even though the lift is open and waiting, he doesn’t catch him. Zayn’s car is gone from the car park and Louis can’t control the scream that escapes him.

This is not the way that things are supposed to go. Fuck. 

His hands shake as he unlocks the car door and the entire ride home he alternates between trying to talk himself off the ledge and screaming nonsense while he slams his fists against the steering wheel. Fuck. He doesn’t have a phone, can’t call Harry, doesn’t even know if Harry’s home or at work or gone out with his friends or what. It’s not as if he tells Louis what’s going on anymore. It doesn’t matter.

Harry believes him. Harry knows the truth. Louis needs to get home and see him and tell him what happened. Because Zayn is his lifeline. Zayn is the key. Without Zayn, Louis is probably stuck here for eternity, doomed to live the rest of his life hiding from his past self, his family, his friends.

It’s the longest hour and a half of his life and he’s in tears, hysterical, barely able to breathe, by the time he pulls up at the flat and throws the car into park. He can’t get the key to work and he starts down this paranoid thought tangent where, if Zayn doesn’t help him, then Harry won’t either, and that maybe he’s fucked it all up enough that Harry’s gone now and doesn’t even live in the flat anymore. Christ, what if he isn’t there. What if he’s gone. What if… What if the hop didn’t work and Louis didn’t land a year too far and instead is stuck in some intermediate time bubble that doesn’t actually exist. What if he died during the hop?

Louis slams the palms of his hands against the door, his shoulders shake, a broken sob escapes his mouth, and the door opens.

Relief floods Louis’ body at the sight of Harry standing barefoot in slightly rumpled joggers and an old ripped t-shirt. 

“Lou, what’s wr—”

He throws himself at Harry, wraps his arms around his waist and his momentum carries them both back into the flat. The door clicks shut and Harry’s hands are warm and heavy on his back as he whispers in Louis’ ear that everything is alright, but _it’s not._

“It’s not, Harry. Nothing is alright.” Louis pulls himself away from Harry and wipes his face with his shirt. “It’s all fucked up. Everything is fucked up. I’ve ruined it.”

Harry scowls at him. “What do you—” 

“Time! Zayn! All of it! I told him and he thought it was a joke, so I went along with it. Fuck. It was easier to get it all out if I pretended it wasn’t real.” He shakes his head and continues, but instead of getting easier, it gets harder to say and he stumbles over his words, fighting to get them out, stopping to make himself breathe in between. “I… I was talking and we… we were doodling. You know, just lines and circles and shit, but then he started drawing. And Harry, he drew this.” Louis slaps his hand against his own chest, then he yanks his shirt up. “He’s never seen it. But I started talking time travel and he drew it. Exactly this. And I told him. I told him we got the tattoos when we fixed that fucking theorem and I showed it to him and he fucking ran. He bolted. I chased after him, but he was gone…”

“What?” Harry stares at him wide-eyed and lays his hands on Louis’ shoulders. “Deep breath, babe. Come on.” He slides one hand down to Louis’ chest and lifts one of Louis’ hands to lay right over his own heart. They stand that way for a few minutes, breathing together. 

Louis can’t stop his tears, at this point they’re flowing down his face, but he can breathe again. Finally, he says, “I’m stuck. I can’t go back in October without Zayn and I… Fuck! As much as I’d love to stay here with you forever, I can’t. I’m… I’m fucking up your life, Harry. I’m ruining your future and I can’t—”

“Shut up.” Harry’s hand on Louis’ chest clenches into a fist, pulling at the fabric of his shirt. 

Louis looks down at Harry’s hand and takes another deep breath. Harry lets go of his shirt, then points at him and pokes him in the center of his chest, right in the middle of his tattoo. “What do I keep saying? You’ve done all of this before. If your tattoo isn’t proof of that, then what is? So what if he ran off? I would’ve too, probably, but I promise you that _he will come back.”_

“You can’t say that. You don’t know…”

“Nobody _knows,_ Louis. But I’m right. I can feel it. You’re not stuck here.”

“I… I… I wish I could be so certain. I just… I don’t want to ruin your—”

“Stop it! Fuck you if you think you’re screwing up my life. How dare you stand here and tell me that you’d _love to stay with me forever_ when you won’t even—” Harry pushes his hair off his face and turns away from Louis, but before Louis can apologize or try to explain, he spins back around. “You’re not _ruining_ my future, Louis. You _are_ my future. And I don’t care what sort of noble bullshit you’re trying to pull, okay? Don’t tell me what I want and don’t tell me that you don’t want me either. I’m sick of it.”

“I do though… Of course I want you, Harry. I just can’t—”

“You can! You can have me, Louis. How many times do I have to tell you that _you have done all of this before._ The only reason that Zayn and Liam and Niall and Doctor Francis—”

“Franklin. Doctor Franklin.”

“Whatever. The only reason the whole stupid Chrono Exploration Program happens is because of you. You’re the one busting your arse, poring over those papers and journals and books sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. You.” Harry shoves Louis’ chest with the tips of his fingers, then drops his hands to his hips and tucks his chin to his chest.

Louis combs his fingers through his hair and walks to the other side of the room, but he’s back in front of Harry in a few seconds, and Harry grabs his hand when he tries to start pacing.

“Lou, I love you. I know you know that.” Harry pulls Louis’ hand and he trips forward, close enough for Harry to take his other hand. “And I know you love me. I can tell. You’re not good at hiding it even when you want to. And don’t tell me that you can’t, okay? Not when I know that you can.” Harry lifts both of Louis’ hands up to his face and kisses his knuckles.

“Harry…”

“You’ve done all of this before, Lou.” Harry keeps his eyes on Louis’ as he brings their lips together and it’s not a drunken kiss that he won’t remember in the morning. It’s full of intent and love and everything that’s gone unsaid between them over the last few months. When Harry drops Louis’ hands and gently cradles his jaw, Louis falls into it. And as they stumble into the bedroom, Louis repeats it again inside his head. _I’ve done all of this before. We’ve done all of this before._

And he lets himself believe it.

∞

As soon as he opens his eyes the next morning, Louis’ heart rate skyrockets from the slow, steady resting rate that it’s been at all night. The entire previous day comes flooding back at once and he can’t handle it. Then he realizes that he’s naked and draped over Harry’s back and he starts to panic all over again. 

“Stop freaking out, Louis,” Harry mumbles into the pillow in front of him, then shifts and turns around until they’re face-to-face. “Are you worried about Zayn or me?”

Louis closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Harry’s reaction. “Both.”

“Right. Of course. Well… I can’t say I didn’t expect this, so…” Harry rolls onto his back and reaches towards the nightstand, grabs his phone, and holds it up where Louis can clearly see the screen. There’s a split second where Louis thinks Harry’s going to call or text Phillip and jealousy flares inside his chest. “Zayn texted last night after you fell asleep. ‘Tell Louis I’m sorry I ran off. I just need some time to think about this shit.’ and I’d like to take this opportunity to say I told you so. _”_

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Louis asks even though he thinks he knows the answer. 

Harry rolls his eyes and says, “Like I wanted to deal with you panicking about us having sex in the middle of the night. Please. It’s enough that it’s happening now.”

“I’m not panicking _._ I’m just…” 

“I swear if you say that you’re concerned for my well-being or something condescending like that, I’ll scream.”

“Harry… You’re twenty-two. I’m thirty.”

“I know.” Harry raises one eyebrow, smirks and says, “It’s hot.”

“It’s not funny.”

“It really is. You’re so concerned about what? My innocence? Guess what, babe? When you and Zayn figure out this whole…” Harry twirls his hand in the air. “Time travel thing, and you magically appear in 2023, you’ll be twenty-nine again and I’ll be twenty-seven.”

“So?”

Harry moves onto his side to face him again. “Louis, I’m only two years younger than you. Don’t act like I’m some immature child. I’m fully capable of taking care of myself. And in five years, I’ll still be two years younger than you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just looking out for you.” Louis starts to reach up and tuck Harry’s hair behind his ear, but stops himself and lets his hand fall to the mattress. “I don’t really understand what you mean to say though.”

“Alright, let me spell it out for you. In 2023, I will be twenty-seven and you will be twenty-nine and I will still be as in love with you as I am today.”

“You can’t say that.” Louis shakes his head and tries to roll away, but Harry’s hand on his shoulder keeps him where he is.

“I can say whatever I want. It’s not like you can stop me.”

“Harry… I can’t ask you to wait for me.”

“You’re not asking me to do anything. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.”

“I don’t… I don’t know…”

“Lou,” Harry whispers and moves closer, brushing his lips across Louis’ forehead. “I’m asking you to trust me. And if you can’t do that, then I’m asking you to give me until October.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that until you leave, I want you to pretend. I’m living with the knowledge that _my Louis_ is heartbroken and unhappy in Florida of all places, and that I could call him up and change all of that in seconds.” Harry stares at him, tears starting to gather in his eyes, and Louis can feel his resolve start to crumble. “But I won’t because you’ve asked me not to. You’ve asked me to trust you, and in doing that, I have to do things that are literally hurting _my Louis_ right now. And I know that I hurt you, Lou. I can see it when you look at me. But I can make you happy if you’ll let me. Give us this.” 

Louis lifts his hand and brushes away the first tear to fall. He did this to them, the least he can do is give Harry the next six months. Slowly, he nods and moves his hand to rest on the side of Harry’s neck. They lay there and watch each other in silence for a moment, then Louis says, “I _do_ love you. I don’t think I ever stopped. I tried… I tried really hard to get over you. And I… I did some dumb shit in the process. I…”

“I don’t care.”

“But you don’t know—”

Harry shrugs his shoulder and it knocks into Louis’ hand which he reaches up and grabs hold of. “I don’t need to know. It doesn’t matter.”

Louis shakes his head and moves forward slightly until their noses are touching, then he closes his eyes.

“Pretend for me,” Harry whispers. “Until you go back.”

He nods and bumps his forehead against Harry’s who laughs, and when Louis opens his eyes, his heart beats harder as he presses a kiss to Harry’s lips. 

∞

There’s an email from Zayn waiting for him when he opens Harry’s laptop and it’s full of very specific questions about how he fits into this situation. Louis can’t answer any of them with any certainty. What he can do is tell Zayn what he knows, then maybe they can figure it out together. 

Louis finally agrees to Skype and, since it’s Harry’s day off, they sit side by side in the bed with the laptop half in both of their laps. 

“Sorry again for running off,” Zayn says in lieu of a greeting. 

Louis shrugs. “Can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same, mate. I still don’t like to think about it and it’s me that’s hopped backwards in time.”

“Yeah, don’t get him started, Zayn.” Harry elbows Louis in the ribs and says, “You should explain the tattoo thing.”

“Right.” Louis nods. “I guess first, um… I think my Liam and your Liam must be the same Liam. Only, he comes to NASA right after you. I didn’t know he was your friend, but then again, I don’t really, um… I don’t hang around you. Like, at all.”

“Really? Why?” 

“You’re a prick.”

“Fuck off,” Zayn laughs. 

“No, for real though. I think… I think you have to be. The Zayn Malik I meet, um… in a few weeks, is…”

Harry pipes up, “You act like a conceited arse, but I think it’s because it’s something that Louis hates. People who think they’re better than others. So, and this is just my thoughts, not like I’m an expert—”

“Shut up, Harry,” Louis and Zayn say in unison.

Louis smirks and says, “We want your thoughts.”

“Okay,” Harry scrunches his nose and takes a breath. “Zayn, you have to wear pleated corduroy trousers, button down shirts, ties, and lab coats _all the time.”_

The look of utter disgust on Zayn’s face makes Louis burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry. Just… You keep your tattoos covered too. When we first met at the library, I thought I’d fucked up time or something because you’re covered in ink. I had no idea.”

“For how long?”

“I guess, well, you don’t have to dress that way all the time. I’ve never seen you out at the shops or anything. And we don’t hang out outside of work, so you’re probably fine to dress however you want outside of work. But, um… until I come back, so from the time you get to Florida until I get back, which should be 14th of October, 2023.”

“Fuck. That’s more than five years.” Zayn holds his hands up in front of his face and says, “Guess I’m putting my hand tattoos on hold.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry, again. I don’t… You don’t have to…”

“Man, you’re not talking me out of the opportunity to work with exotic matter that actually exists. And time travel? Yeah, I’ll dress however you want.” Zayn tugs on the neck of his jumper and pulls the sleeves down until they cover his arms completely. “Now talk to me about Liam.”

It’s such an odd thing to do, telling Zayn what’s about to happen. He feels like a fortune teller. “Liam discovers the next superheavy metal element. He theorizes that it’ll be number one-twenty-six and he’s right. They name it after him. Paynium.”

Zayn cackles and falls backwards out of the sight of the screen. Louis snorts quietly and Harry starts to giggle. It takes them a few minutes to quiet down, then Zayn shakes his head and says, “Of course he does.”

Louis sighs. “Are you sure you want to drop out of uni?”

“Whatever I’ve got to do, I’ll do. You said the head of the project is named Franklin?”

“Yeah, Doctor Franklin. I know how to get you in to see him, but past that… I’m not sure. I think we have to have something concrete to bring to the table. I need to crack it. We work out the maths, you take it to Franklin, and he’ll believe anything you say.”

“What, like I met you when you time traveled?”

Louis rubs his chin and hums. “Maybe? I think you should be vague about it. Say you met one of his guys, because he treats us all the same.”

They talk over Skype for hours, both of them scribbling in notebooks while Harry records their conversation to play back later in case they forget anything. From floor plans for the separate facilities to Franklin’s email address, they try to cover it all, though there’s no way to touch on everything in a single day. 

It’s long past dark when they finally say goodbye. Harry closes the laptop and stands up to stretch while Louis lays flat on the bed and watches him. In the months that he’s been living in their flat again, he hasn’t allowed himself to look at Harry for more than a few seconds at a time. He still feels like he’s not supposed to, but he forces himself not to look away. 

All those years he thought that this boy broke his heart.

“Hey.” Louis pats the bed and Harry flings himself down onto the mattress beside him. “I have to tell you something.”

“I love you,” Harry says it so easily, like it’s not scary at all. He rolls over and crawls sideways until he’s laying half on top of Louis with his face tucked against his neck.

Louis wraps the arm that’s underneath Harry around his shoulders and rests his other hand in the dip of his waist, inhales the scent of Harry’s hair and kisses the top of his head. His hair tickles Louis’ lips when he whispers, “I need you to know something.”

“Told you I don’t care what you’ve done since we broke up.”

“No, no. It’s not about that. It’s about the hop forward in time. I, um… One of the things that was made very clear to us before we signed on to actually _do this_ was that there’s a huge risk, especially on the return hop.”

Harry lifts his head and catches Louis’ eye and now that he can, Louis reaches up and rubs the line between Harry’s eyebrows with his thumb while he asks, “What do you mean?”

“I… I… There’s a chance that it won’t work. I mean, it’s time travel. And it’s already got fucked up once. There’s just…” Louis bites his bottom lip and tilts his head to the side. This is the part he doesn’t like to think about. With all of the secrecy surrounding the Chrono Exploration Project, Louis wasn’t even able to warn anyone that something might happen. If he disappears somewhere in time and doesn’t make it back to 2023, his family will find out nothing more than that his life was lost in the course of his work on the space shuttle. “I suppose there’s no guarantee, so…”

“Then stay here.” 

“You know I can’t, Harry.”

Harry pouts and lays his head back down on Louis’ chest. “So, you think you might end up in 2025 instead?”

“No, um… That’s part of the problem. When we started sending organic material into the past, it took us a while to get to the point where we could return it to its original time. Sometimes it disappeared completely and we… we don’t know where it went.”

“But you figured it out.”

“Yeah, we did. And then all of the tests were fine. But, Harry,” Louis brushes his fingers through Harry’s hair and tucks it behind his ear. “It’s already gone wrong for me once and I… I could not be. I could not be fine. I just… I want you to know everything.”

Harry shakes his head and says, “No, Lou. You can be worried from now until October about this, but I’m not. You’ll get home fine. And I’ll see you when you do.”

“What do you…”

“I’ll see you when you get there. 2023.”

“Harry, you can’t… I don’t want you to wait for me. That’s… That’s five years, baby, and no promise that I’ll be there at the end of it.”

“Not up to you.” Harry kisses the side of Louis’ neck and his lips brush against Louis’ skin as he talks. “I know you don’t want me to get hurt and I know you’re worried about breaking my heart, but you’re going to have to get over it.”

Louis sighs and closes his eyes. Harry’s stubborn, he always has been. “What about… Would you compromise? Sort of?”

Harry lifts his head again and narrows his eyes. “How?”

“Well, let’s say that sometime during the five years that I’m gone, you meet someone. They pique your interest. Go out with them.”

“That’s stupid, Lou,” Harry huffs and rolls his eyes. “Why would I?”

Louis watches him warily. Harry’s getting annoyed with him, so he has to tread carefully. “What are you going to tell your family? Your friends? That you’re waiting for me to _time travel,_ but it’ll be a while?”

“Whatever,” Harry mumbles and leans down to bite Louis’ shoulder. “I’ll think about it. Not making any promises.”

Louis takes a deep breath. He’ll count this as a win. “I honestly didn’t expect anymore than that.”

∞

Together, Louis and Zayn finally crack the formulae they need for sending inanimate objects backwards through time. They need to be able to prove them, and they’ll still need Niall’s wormhole research and Zayn’s eventual discovery of a usable exotic matter, but it’s enough for Zayn to hand over to Doctor Franklin when he gets to Florida. 

The second he leaves the airport, he texts Harry’s phone a string of angry emojis, a comment about the sticky hot weather, and a demand that Louis buy him drinks for a year after he gets back to 2023 as payment for the stifling nature of his required wardrobe. 

“I can’t believe Zayn just dropped everything and moved to Florida because I told him to,” Louis says after he texts back that he’ll buy Zayn whatever he wants as long as he gets back in one piece. 

Harry reaches across the bed and smacks Louis on the chest. “He didn’t do it because you told him to, he did it because he worked that theorem out with you. He knows the maths are solid.” 

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Still shocked I did the maths, to be honest.” Louis grabs Harry’s hand as he starts to slide it down, stopping him before he gets close enough to pinch his nipple. “I wonder what happens now.”

Harry scoots closer and rests his head on Louis’ shoulder. “Guess we’ll find out. Zayn’ll call tomorrow after he talks to Doctor Franklin.”

Slowly, Louis trails his fingers along Harry’s arm, up to his shoulder, and back down to his hand. It’s late and for a while, they’ve been lying there in the dark, but Louis’ mind is too busy to sleep. He waits until Harry’s breathing evens out, then he whispers, “I miss my mum.”

“I know, babe.” Harry pulls himself even closer to Louis’ side, kisses underneath his chin, then rubs his thumb over Louis’ jaw. “Maybe we can figure something out. Talk about it tomorrow.”

“Okay. Didn’t mean to bother you. Thought you were sleeping. Sorry.”

“Don’t be, Lou. I want you to talk to me about all of this. I know it’s shit, being stuck here, not able to be yourself, really. Or live your life. But… We’ll do what we can to make it as good as possible.” Harry presses a kiss to Louis’ cheek and runs his fingers through the hair at his temples. It needs to be trimmed, but he’s not sure if Harry will want to do it. “I want to… I want to make you happy. I… It’s hard to fathom living without you. I know it’s going to happen and I know you’ve done it. I just want to remember this… while you’re gone.”

“Baby… I’m sorry I—” Harry’s finger against his lips quiets him, but the idea of leaving him here, the thought of Harry missing him for five years… waiting for him…

“No, don’t, please. Just…” Harry lifts his head and leans down to kiss Louis slow and sweet, then he snuggles back up against his side. “Let’s sleep.”

∞

It’s hard, keeping his distance when he and Harry are literally tripping over each other, but he tries. When Harry wakes up early every morning, Louis sleeps in, and at night, he works or reads when he knows Harry’s about to go to bed, so that he can avoid any late night conversations about their relationship. 

After about a week of Louis being increasingly distant and moody, Harry comes home early from work on Friday, smiling and in a good mood when he walks through the door, to find Louis sitting on the couch attempting to meditate. He’s out of practice and he knows it. He’s just been so busy working that he’s neglecting himself, and he’s not going to talk to Harry about his worries, not when their relationship is up there at the top of the list, so he’s doing what he can. As soon as Louis heard Harry pull up in his car, his focus was broken, but instead of opening his eyes and greeting Harry, Louis sits cross legged and pretends he’s meditating, hoping that Harry will ignore him and go shower and give Louis more time to be alone. 

Not that he needs time alone. The tension between them has been building all week and as much as Harry tries to pretend Louis isn’t being grumpy and withdrawn, Louis knows he notices.

With his eyes closed, he listens as Harry puts his keys down and pulls off his coat, then he waits for the sound of his footsteps as he walks back towards the bathroom. Instead, the couch rocks when Harry drops down onto the cushion next to him, and Louis turns to him, clenching his jaw and glowering as he unfolds his legs.

Harry gives him a slow, appraising look, and says, “Gorgeous weather today. The sun is actually out.”

“Must be nice,” Louis says, rolling his eyes and adjusting his socks for something to do with his hands.

“It is. We should go for a walk or, I don’t know, just go somewhere.”

“Can’t ‘just go somewhere’ or did you forget?” 

“No,” Harry says slowly. “I know we’d have to be careful, but—”

“Go somewhere by yourself,” Louis snaps. He stands up and starts for the bedroom, but Harry jumps up and grabs his arm. “Let me go.”

“Fine.” Harry lets go of his arm and says, “But I’ll follow you.”

Louis stops and turns around. “Did you get off work early just so you could annoy me?”

Harry leans back a bit and narrows his eyes. “If I’m so annoying, why don’t you leave? I won’t stop you.”

“I can’t fucking leave! Are you serious?” Louis turns and points to the back half of the tiny flat, then gestures all around him. “I can’t go anywhere! I can’t do anything! I can’t even fucking meditate properly anymore. I’m tired of being alone all damn day. I miss my mum and my family and I’m worried about the boys’ hops and wondering if they had trouble too. I’m fucking, like, stuck in this shitty flat all day with only my brain for company and I hate it!”

“I…” Harry closes his mouth and frowns.

Now that he’s begun, Louis can’t stop himself from continuing, and he thought they’d probably end up fighting at some point, was almost looking forward to them yelling at each other so that he could let off some steam, but rather than doing that, he keeps throwing all of his feelings at Harry nonstop. “My mum is right down the road, but I can’t go see her. And you know how often I usually talk to her, but I haven’t seen her or spoken to her in months!”

Harry holds up one finger and opens his mouth to speak, but Louis talks over him.

“I miss you when you’re at work, but I don’t want to be around you when you’re here ’cause I can’t keep from thinking about how much I fucking love you and then I feel guilty for even feeling that way! Jesus. I keep thinking about the me in Florida and how he’s getting royally screwed over by this whole...” Louis waves both of his hands between them, leans his head back, and growls up at the ceiling.

“Lou—”

“No. You… You don’t… I keep remembering things that I don’t ever want to think about. And I hate it.” Louis points at Harry and shouts, “I hate it and I hate you and I hate myself and I get to feel this way! I get to feel like I’m ruining your life, even if I’m not!”

Before Louis can get his last words out, Harry crowds up against him, wraps his arms around Louis and crushes him to his chest. “I didn’t realize… Babe…” Harry tries to put a few inches between them, but Louis grabs Harry’s waist and holds tight. “We’ll work on it, okay? Like, you need to get outside. Maybe we can drive somewhere. I don’t know, but you need to take care of yourself. I’m not used to you doing, um… meditating? It’s new to me, but I can tell it helps you, so… We’ll figure it out. And I know you miss your mum. Maybe there’s something we can do, like… I don’t know what, but we’ll figure that out too.” Harry turns his head slightly and kisses Louis’ temple.

Louis takes a deep breath and blinks away the tears gathered in his eyes and mumbles against Harry’s t-shirt, “I don’t hate you.”

“I know,” Harry says and Louis can feel him smile. “You don’t hate you either, but you can be irritated with us both.” 

They talk about it later that night. It takes Harry convincing him that he’s probably done it before for Louis to agree to see his mum. Somewhere he can remain hidden, so he can just _see_ her. Without her seeing him.

After the youngest twins were born, his mum started making the entire family go to the playground near their house on Sunday mornings as soon as they finished breakfast. He knows his mum and he knows how much she loves routine. 

When Louis wakes up on Sunday, he’s nervous. This is the first time he’s actively planning to do something that he knows could disrupt his timeline just because he wants to. There’s no reason to think this is something that he has to do, like staying at the flat with Harry or finding Zayn. But he’s going to do it anyway. 

For once, Harry doesn’t wake up before the sun, so when Louis is too fidgety to fall back asleep, he slips out of bed and goes to the kitchen to make tea. Even after drinking it, he still has so much nervous energy that he cleans the kitchen, but when he’s ready for a second cup, he makes two, takes them back to the bedroom with him, and wakes up Harry.

They spend the early morning in bed, which is where they’ve been spending most of their days lately. Not that it’s actually surprising, but in addition to his small obsession with Louis’ current age and the whole older man _thing,_ Harry spends an inordinate amount of time ogling Louis’ body. 

The physical training was always just practical, and needed for his job, until the first time he and Harry had sex in the middle of the day with the lights on and Harry spent a good half-hour just _looking_ at him.

Really, it’s only fair because Louis turned around and did the same thing to him. Relearning Harry’s body, seeing all of him, trailing kisses over the same skin that he tasted so many times before, touching him exactly the way he likes to be touched, drawing moans and whines from his lips with practiced ease… makes Louis want to cry from happiness every time because he thought he’d never be with Harry like this again. 

The contrasting emotions he experiences make his head spin. While he’s admitted to Harry more than once that he didn’t handle the end of their relationship well at all, and that even in the following years he made a number of poor decisions, he’s gone along with Harry’s request and hasn’t got into the specifics with him. Harry thinks he means that he went out a lot, got drunk, and slept with strangers, which he did, but… 

Moving to Florida put an enormous strain on every facet of his life. The pressure of his new job as an aerospace engineer working on the new shuttle design was incredible, and though he got along well with his colleagues and superiors, he constantly felt like the new guy, especially being one of the few shuttle engineers from the U.K. 

Growing up in Donny, and even when he was at uni, Louis was always close to his mum and siblings. They had dinner together almost every Sunday, and he was able to help out with the girls, and the baby twins when they were born. And, of course, they all loved Harry. Four thousand miles of mostly water between them, the five hour time difference, and long hours spent working at home on top of his forty hour week at NASA, meant that Louis spent more time alone than he had before in his life and his close personal relationships became phone calls and Skype conversations.

After the first couple of months, Louis wanted nothing more than to get on a plane and fly home. Harry kept him going, kept him together. Their conversations were constant over Whatsapp. Louis woke up every day to a good morning message from Harry and every night before bed he made sure to type out something for Harry to see first thing. And they did everything that they could to FaceTime or Skype daily, even if just for a few minutes. It was hard, but it helped him feel connected, made it all seem temporary and like it was something that they were in together. 

Almost a year in and Louis thought he was getting the hang of it. They had a routine. They were almost at the halfway point of his contract with NASA. It was tough, but it was working. 

And then it wasn’t.

At first Louis dealt with things by drinking and smoking and fucking. Three things that at least made him feel good for a little while, and he was able to almost balance it with work. But only a few months later, he spiraled into depression so fast and so hard that he wasn’t doing anything at all except work. He stopped going out, but he didn’t _start_ doing anything else. And he was barely sleeping. Eating only when he remembered to, which was maybe once a day. 

After he ignored two weeks worth of phone calls, texts, and Skype conversations with his mum, she flew in to Orlando and showed up at his condo unannounced. 

He took sick leave from work and stayed home while his mum took care of him. Never in his life had he felt like such a child, unable to do much more than get himself to the toilet and back to bed, but she let him continue on like that for a few days, then she made him get up one morning, made him shower and get dressed, and she made him talk to her. She helped him find a doctor, who helped him figure out what kind of meds he needed, and then he started seeing a therapist once a week. 

Gradually, he started to get better. He worked on it the way he’d worked on maintaining his relationship with Harry, he worked on getting through the day, he worked on a routine, on taking care of himself, and eventually he worked on building a life that was solely his own. All of these years later, it’s something that he still lives with. Deals with. And while it isn’t as heavy, pressing, or constant as it once was. It’s there. 

These are all of the things that he thinks of when he looks at Harry and sees _love_ looking back at him. These are the memories that make the roiling ball of guilt spin in his stomach. Because now he knows that _he put himself through all of that._ He’s doing it now. 2018 Louis is spinning out of control and 2023 Louis is lying on his back in bed, looking up at Harry, completely enraptured by every detail.

The sweat beading on his upper lip, the line between his eyebrows where they’re drawn together in concentration, and the flex of his biceps when he levers himself up using Louis’ knees. The goosebumps that spread all over his body when Louis rakes his fingernails up through the hair on his thighs, the pebbled skin of his nipples, and the trembling of his abdominal muscles. The pink of his lips and the white of his teeth biting down. The tendrils of hair that have fallen out of the bun that he tied his hair in before he climbed on top of Louis and slowly sank down onto his cock.

Every part of Harry is beautiful and every second that Louis spends in his presence is like some sort of cosmic redemption. It’s such a mind-fuck. He lived through all of that because of this. He lived through all of that to get to this. And he can’t stop the fear that takes hold of him when he remembers that one of the major contributing factors in his depression was the sense of being abandoned. He wishes he could do more to prevent Harry from feeling that way when he leaves in October and he hopes that Harry will forgive him. 

∞

“I won’t drive past it more than once, Louis. Your mum probably hates me and Lottie is pretty scary, so if they see me…” Harry pulls a green beanie over his hair and slides on a dark pair of sunglasses, then pulls on a flannel shirt. “I’ll drive slow, but it’ll be easier for you to see if you’re in the back.”

Louis rolls his eyes and pulls his hood down. His hair is so much longer now than it’s ever been and his beard is much thicker, so he’s pretty sure that they wouldn’t recognize him even if they saw his face, but he’ll do as Harry suggests. He only wants a glimpse, really. Though he did consider sneaking into the house while they’re all at the park just to sit on the sofa and breathe in the smell of home.

“Ready?” Harry asks as he opens the front door and peers outside. 

“Yes,” Louis says as he yawns and covers his mouth his hand. He’s nervous, mostly because he shouldn’t be attempting to see anyone who knows he’s supposed to be in Florida, but also there’s a general undercurrent of anxiety that’s been there since Zayn left for Florida.

“Oh, wait. Neighbors.” Harry shuts the door again and turns around to lean back against it. “We’ll give them a minute. They’re getting out of their car.”

Louis shrugs and steps between Harry’s legs, puts both hands to his cheeks and kisses him hard enough to knock his head back into the door. Immediately, Harry grabs Louis’ arse, then moves his hands up slightly and slides them past the elastic waistband of his pants, digging his fingertips into the bare skin beneath and lifting him slightly until Louis is standing on his toes and pressing their hips together. 

Nothing else distracts him as well as Harry. Louis tips his head back and nudges their noses together, kisses him once more and says, “They’re probably gone now.”

Harry lets his head fall back and loosens his hold on Louis’ bum, but doesn’t completely let go, just enough to lower him back down onto his heels. 

“We _just_ had sex.” Harry laughs and kisses Louis’ forehead. “Why are you grinding on me?” He lets him go and adjusts his sunglasses where Louis knocked them askew while Louis peeks out the window.

When Louis gives him the all clear, Harry opens the door. They’re on the road and almost to the park before Louis answers the question that was most likely rhetorical. 

“I know we’ve sort of silently agreed not to talk about it, but I’ve missed you for a long time, so I’m… It’s like I’m trying to get as much of you as I can before I have to leave.”

“Babe…” Harry slows down as he approaches the park and Louis slouches down in the back seat until he can just see through the bottom of the window and hopefully isn’t noticeable to anyone looking over at the car. 

They’re all there. His stepdad is pushing both twins in the swings, standing in front of them and tickling them every time they swing forward and he can reach them. The older twins are over by one of the larger flower beds and he watches them take a selfie together. It’s bizarre seeing them so much younger and his heart hurts to think of everything that he missed that year. They walk around the flower bed and down the path, so Louis lets his eyes wander, looking for his mum and Lottie and Fizzy. 

Harry turns the corner to drive by the football field and all three of them are there, walking near the fence along the outside of the field. They’re so close that Louis’ heart starts to beat a little faster and he stares at them until his mum lifts her head and looks their way and he slouches down completely out of sight. He rests his hand on his chest and closes his eyes. Seeing them makes missing them feel like two distinct emotions because, while he did miss this time with them in 2018, he actually misses them the way he remembers them from 2023. The babies are nowhere near babies anymore—they’re almost the same age as the older twins are here, Phoebe and Daisy are at uni, Fizzy isn’t even in the U.K., and Lottie’s engaged to marry a man that she hasn’t met yet. He misses them, but not this them. It makes him long for the future for the first time.

“Shit.” Harry quickly glances back over his shoulder at Louis. “They saw me. Not that my car is inconspicuous, but your mum looked right at me. Did you see?”

“Yeah, I don’t think they saw me though.” Louis lifts his head to see if they’ve passed the park, then sits up and crawls between the two front seats and drops down into the passenger seat. “Where to?”

“You said they started construction, so I want to check it out.” Harry looks over at him quickly, then looks back at the road, reaches over and grabs hold of Louis’ hand. “I’m not complaining about all of the extra attention, just be prepared for the same treatment when you do get back because I’m the one who’s going to go without for five years.”

“Don’t say that.”

Harry just shakes his head a little and squeezes his hand again. 

He doesn’t slow the car as much as he did at the playground because there isn’t much to see. The foundation and framing are done and there are pallets of bricks waiting for the bricklayers. Construction is perfectly on schedule. Everything seems to be going well, actually. 

According to Zayn, it took him three meetings with Doctor Franklin to convince him to even look at their work, but once he did, and checked the maths, he was on board. It’s as if he was waiting for something like this to happen because it’s the United States government and they don’t do anything quickly, but once Franklin set the wheels in motion, things started happening fast.

They offered Louis the transfer out of the shuttle engineering division, hired Niall, and convinced Liam to leave New York within the first two weeks. Having the facility locations already picked out cut down on the amount of research, though there was some argument from Louis about building the one in Doncaster. Zayn must have pulled rank or just ignored his complaints because he hasn’t heard anything else from him about it and, though it was early in the program, Louis remembers being so angry that his opinions weren’t listened to, at all. It’s one of the first things that he and Zayn argued about.

Louis lets go of Harry’s hand, reaches over, and pats his leg. “Thanks for helping today. I feel a little better having seen them.”

“Welcome, babe. Anything else you want to do?”

“Can we just drive around for a bit? It’s nice being out of the flat.”

Harry nods and keeps driving. Now that they’re not meeting Zayn at the library anymore, Louis is back to spending his days alone in the flat. The cabin fever isn’t actually as bad because he has so much work to focus on and he’s impressing himself every day with the improvements in his maths skills. 

They ride around for hours, not really talking, Harry turns wherever he gets the urge since there’s no destination. It wasn’t at all what he expected, seeing his family. It dulled the ache a little, but not enough. Because his way of missing them has changed from sadness at their absence in his life to almost mourning the possible permanent loss. 

He can’t get it out of his head, the knowledge that there’s a chance he won’t make it back. Sure, the chance is small, but he doesn’t know what the probability is that something will go wrong in that vein when a similar error has already occurred. If you take them as independent events, it would be the same, but there’s no way to know if they _are_ independent. If it isn’t random and the problem is with the facility or the machine or him, he won’t have any way of knowing. And if he’s the loaded die in the equation… 

It sticks. Long after they return to the flat, it’s there. The idea that on Saturday, the thirteenth of October, he’s going to lay down inside that giant metal tube and disappear into nothingness. 

∞

As the summer wears on, Louis is able to push his more morbid thoughts to the side and focus on Zayn. At first, they’re able to work during the day—morning for Zayn and afternoon for Louis—but a few weeks in, they’re discussing a theory of Zayn’s about expanding exotic matter when Louis _—2018 Louis_ —barges into his office unannounced, loudly demanding that they send him to Doncaster to observe the work on the facility as it’s being built and Zayn has to slam his laptop shut. After that, either they Skype around midnight for Louis or around six in the morning for Zayn. Either way, one of them is tired and not performing at their peak, so they alternate weeks and they make it work. 

“Z, explain Liam.” Louis taps his pencil against his notepad and chews his lip, then scribbles down another formula.

“Why can’t you use a tablet and a stylus like everyone else. It’s like the dark ages, you and your pencil, man.”

Louis scoffs and holds up his notebook for Zayn to look at his work. “You screenshot it?”

“Yes, old man. What do you want to know about Liam?”

“Why didn’t I know that you were friends?”

“Easy. I told him that we needed to seem to be strictly colleagues because I was concerned that you and Niall would think he was being favored. Then I told Franklin something similar, so he’d keep the connection to himself. He likes secrets. It wasn’t a problem.”

“I think I would’ve picked up on it if I hadn’t hated being around you so much.”

“Maybe. This Louis is a prick though. I know he’s going through some personal shit, but damn, mate.”

“Listen, about that. Can you… I need you to do me a favor.”

It’s a shitty thing to do and a shitty thing to ask of Zayn, so it’s unsurprising when he tells Louis that he’ll have to think it over. He just can’t have Harry waiting around for him when there’s a good chance he’ll never get there, but he doesn’t know how to convince Harry to move on with his life. He’s stopped discussing it with Harry because it just pisses him off and then they fight and then Louis ends up sleeping on the couch, so he wants Zayn’s input. Maybe he can think of something. 

The next time they talk, Zayn tells him no. Harry is stubborn and Zayn is busy enough with work now that he doesn’t have time to try to convince him to give up on waiting for Louis. And he doesn’t understand why Louis would want him to. 

It’s not as though he wants to hurt Harry. Actually, it’s the exact opposite. Imagining the loneliness that Harry will feel once Louis leaves is enough for him to agonize over. But the notion of him waiting all of that time, putting his life on hold, probably counting down the days until they can see each other again, only to be crushed if Louis never reappears… As much as it pains him to think of Harry with someone else, he hopes that Harry meets someone wonderful who sweeps him off his feet and makes him forget all about waiting for him.

Since there’s nothing that he can do right now to dissuade Harry from waiting, he throws himself into doing all that he can to make sure that the Chrono Exploration Program is successful. If he’s done all of this before, he figures that it can’t hurt to give Zayn every single detail of the last six years. 

He starts by making an outline for each year, listing all of the major occurrences within the program. Then he goes back and fills in anything he can think of that might be important in the lead up to certain events. The hardest part of that ends up being his personal bullshit, but he includes it because it’s necessary. If anyone is personally responsible for screwing up his hop backwards in time, it’s him. 

Towards the end of August, Zayn calls while Louis and Harry are in the middle of eating dinner, which means it’s only the afternoon in Florida. They’ve been sitting around in their pants since Harry got home from work that afternoon and dragged Louis into the shower with him.

Harry answers and at first all Louis can hear is half of the conversation, but a few seconds later, Harry puts his phone on the table and taps speaker.

“Alright, Z, you’re on speakerphone now.”

“Right. Thanks, Harry. Louis?”

“Yeah, mate.” Louis leans over the phone and rests his forearms on the table. “What’s so urgent?”

“Who figures out the gravity thing? Remember taking it out of the equation? I’m trying not to interfere too much, like we planned, but you guys are struggling with this theorem and I kind of want to scream.”

“Oh, that’s, um… that’s me. I… It’s really stupid.”

Harry shoves his shoulder and says, “Just say it, Lou.”

“Fine. I was in the break room making tea. Today’s Thursday the sixteenth? Oh, shit, yeah so today then. I go to make tea every afternoon around three. Anyway, that shitty little telly that they keep in there that’s always on, but it’s muted?”

“Yeah, there’s been a _Friends_ marathon all week. I was just down there.” 

“Yes, exactly! The episode where Rachel’s ex-fiance says he’s still in love with her was on—”

“The One With The Evil Orthodontist.” 

“Thanks, Harry. Do you have them all memorized?” Louis asks, but he shakes his head.

Zayn clears his throat and says, “Get to the point, please.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Louis purses his lips and taps his finger against his mouth. “Oh, right, so I was making tea and someone had turned the volume up. Right at the beginning of the episode, Phoebe yells about Ugly Naked Guy getting gravity boots. And I don’t know. It set off something in my brain.”

Louis and Harry stare down at the phone for a second, but then the screen says call ended and Harry picks it up.

“He hung up.” Harry frowns and checks again to be sure.

He’s still looking at it when it pings with a text from Zayn.

_Had to run to the break room and turn up the volume. It was still on mute! Skype tonight?_

Harry slides his phone over and Louis reads it again before responding.

_Tomorrow night. You have tattoos to draw._

“This is so weird. I know I said you’ve done all of this before, but just… Imagine if one little thing didn’t happen. If Zayn hadn’t noticed that the telly was muted or if it was another episode…” Harry stands up from the little table and takes their plates to the sink. “What happens now?”

“I’m getting my tattoo.” Louis rubs his hand over his chest and looks over at Harry. “We’ll start sending simple solid elements back. Then compounds and eventually organic matter in a couple of years.”

He gets up and walks over to help Harry clean up, waiting for another question, but it doesn’t come. Harry washes and Louis dries and while he puts the dishes away, Harry quietly watches him from his spot by the sink. 

“Lou, how do they send you back to 2023 in two months if they haven’t sent anything anywhere yet?” Harry asks and turns to rest his hip against the countertop, folding his arms across his chest.

He wishes he knew exactly how it works, but it’s one of the things that he and Malik butted heads about. Louis still has trouble reconciling them as the same person when he thinks back on all of the times that they disagreed or argued or, well, Louis threw a fit. 

“I don’t know precisely how they do it. There are two rooms, side by side, arrival and departure. No one on the team has been allowed in the arrival chamber other than Zayn. There are people who work there, but we’re not allowed to talk to them. All I know is that they open the wormhole in 2023 and pull me through it from there.”

Harry frowns and raises his hand to his mouth to pinch his lower lip. “Have you told Zayn this?”

“No.” Louis exhales loudly, puffing his cheeks out. “I have to tell him a lot about the chambers, actually. And about the lieutenants who were over my hop. I have to make a detailed outline for him.”

Harry holds his hands out towards Louis, wiggling his fingers until Louis grabs on and lets Harry pull him in. He steps between Harry’s legs and leans against him chest to chest and rests his forehead on Harry’s bare shoulder.

The warmth and weight of Harry’s hands as he slides them up and down Louis’ back is almost hypnotizing and he loses track of how long they’ve been standing there until Harry mutters, “Stop pushing me away.”

Louis holds his breath and opens his eyes, blinking slowly, but unable to see much of anything except shadow and Harry’s pale skin. Harry’s hands don’t stop their soothing movements up and down his back and after a moment Louis feels like he can breathe again. “I’m not. Not really.”

“You are.” Harry lets one hand rest on Louis’ lower back and brings the other one up to play with Louis’ hair where it falls on his neck. Harry seems to like touching it, he sometimes falls asleep with his head on Louis’ chest and his fingers in the ends of his hair. 

Louis shakes his head, but doesn’t raise it from Harry’s shoulder. 

“Whenever we Skype with Zayn and he mentions you—Florida you, I mean—you get distant. You withdraw. You don’t… I asked him not to bring him up anymore unless it’s necessary.”

That gets Louis’ attention. He lifts his head and leans back so that he can meet Harry’s eyes. “When did you do that?”

“Few days back. On my way into the bakery.” Harry drops his hands from Louis’ back and rests them on the edge of the countertop on either side of his hips, lifts his chin in defiance and Louis takes a half step back. “Called him and told him that I thought something was eating at you, but you weren’t talking to me about it. Asked him if he’d let me know if he thought something was going on.”

Louis takes another step back and crossed his arms tight across his chest. “And?”

“Well, I told him that about not mentioning Florida Louis. And I said whatever was bothering you didn’t seem like a physics or maths related thing. So what’s left, Lou? Your family. Me.”

Slowly Louis closes his eyes and breathes, then blinks and tries to hold his gaze steady on Harry’s. “What did he tell you?”

“You’re not getting rid of me, babe. I don’t even care to prove it to you at this point. Two months and you’ll know. But…” Harry looks down and says, “I wish you’d told me how bad things were. Zayn said that a couple of weeks after he got there, you took medical leave. He’d only just met you and could tell something was off, like really badly off. Said you’re better now, but still a dickhead.”

He’s torn between wanting to comfort Harry, because it’s clear that he’s at least partially blaming himself for the state that _his Louis_ is in, and wanting to scream at him. Maybe he’s just got used to being alone since he moved to Florida. His mum is the only person who knows firsthand what it was like at its worst and they don’t discuss it. They get as far as her asking how he’s doing with a certain tone and a meaningful look, and he’ll answer that he’s fine or that things could be better or that he’s having a really good couple of weeks. 

“You said you didn’t want to know and I really didn’t want to tell you, so…” Louis shrugs and scratches at his beard. “It wasn’t just about you. It was my entire situation. Things really are better now. Mostly.”

“Mostly.”

“Yeah, I mean…” Louis turns and walks out of the room. He can’t stand there in the kitchen and watch Harry refuse to look at him, so he crawls into bed and lays on his stomach with the duvet pulled over his head.

It jostles him when Harry climbs onto the mattress beside him and finds his way under the duvet and onto Louis’ side of the bed, practically laying on top of him. 

“You should stop punishing yourself.” Harry’s breath is hot against his ear and his body is heavy, holding him down. “This whole situation is basically one inescapable loop. There’s nothing you could have done then and there’s nothing you can do now.”

Louis turns his head and Harry moves his body so that he’s only half way laying on top of Louis and they can see each other. “I’ve done all of this before, but I hate it, baby. Look at what it did to us. To me. I feel… like I’m damaged. And I made myself this way.”

“Don’t…” Harry shushes him and combs his hair back off his forehead. “You’re wonderful. You’re different, not damaged. And you… you’ve done so much.”

“Right. Screwed up time travel.” Louis scoffs and turns to bury his face into the mattress.

Harry pinches his ear until Louis turns back to look at him. “For such a clever man, you’re rather stupid. The only reason that time travel exists is because of you.”

Louis laughs and rolls onto his side to fully face Harry, dislodging him from his spot on his back.

Harry scowls at him. “I’m serious. If you didn’t travel back too far, how would Zayn end up in Florida?”

“I…”

“How would they figure out that gravity didn’t need to be considered in that equation?”

Louis gapes at him, unable to speak.

“Would Liam decide to focus on subatomic particles and superheavy elements if Zayn didn’t push him in that direction? And Zayn would never have done that if not for you.”

“But…”

“You’ve seriously been so set on blaming yourself for fucking something up that you haven’t noticed that you didn’t actually fuck anything up at all. Babe.” Harry pushes Louis onto his back and crawls on top of him, resting his forehead against Louis’ and Louis just blinks up at him. “I thought you knew and were just being stubborn.”

Louis shakes his head, reaches up slowly and taps his index finger against Harry’s temple. “The brains of the operation.”

∞

The last two months before he leaves, Louis spends almost every waking moment compiling list after list and frantically filling Zayn in on every tiny detail that he can think of. 

Harry opening his eyes to the truth of the situation helped pull him most of the way out of the funk he was letting consume him, but he still has his moments where the guilt overtakes him. There’s nothing he can do to rid himself of that feeling, just like there’s nothing he can do about its causes. The harder he tries to convince Harry not to wait for him, the more determined Harry seems, so he agrees not to mention it again as long as Harry promises not to instantly dismiss every possibility of meeting someone else. And he still can’t shake the idea that he won’t survive the hop. That’s the one thing that he _hasn’t_ done before. 

Still, even the most seemingly insignificant bits of information get written down in his notebook, then either emailed to Zayn or discussed over Skype. From his driver taking him past the flat and the names of the lieutenants working at the Doncaster facility, so that he’s sure to think of Harry during the hop, to pushing for the exercise program and guided meditation. 

It’s just really difficult for Louis to accept that he’s basically led the Chrono Exploration Program from the start. All of the things about it that have pissed him off, all of the requirements that he’s thought of as annoying or silly, his anger at being kept out of the loop as far as what goes on in the arrival chamber, every single aspect of the program that he’s hated has been something that he’s insisted Zayn implement. It’s literally his fault that he has to say chrono instead of time and chamber instead of room. Zayn laughs so hard at Louis’ dumbfounded expression upon that realization that Louis closes the laptop and doesn’t answer when he calls back.

Ever since they offered him the position in the Chrono Exploration Program, Louis has wondered why they chose him and, while Liam and Niall have both offered their thoughts, there has always been the idea in the back of Louis’ head that it was a mistake and that at any time, someone high ranking would appear to tell him that his services were no longer required. Occasionally, he wondered if he was unknowingly involved in some sort of experiment. He just never felt like he fit in and he’s curious what things will be like when he gets back to his own time. _If_ he survives the hop.

Louis is sitting on the floor behind the couch, trying to meditate and _not_ think about dying, when he hears Harry struggling to unlock the front door. He hurries to open it before Harry gets frustrated with the lock and, when he does, Harry has his phone to his ear and his finger to his lips. He mouths “Gemma” as he wiggles his key free from the lock, so Louis shuts the door and lets Harry have the front of the house to pace around while he talks to his sister.

He’s lying starfished across the bed on his back, eyes closed, and halfway attempting to fall asleep for no reason other than to see if he can, when he hears Harry saying goodbye to Gemma.

“Lou?”

“Yeah?” Louis blinks his eyes open and lolls his head to the side. “What’s up?”

“Thought you were sleeping.” Harry crawls onto the bed, still in his coat and boots, with flour in his hair and a smear of pink icing on his cheek, and kneels between Louis’ legs. “Gemma wants me to move in with her.”

“In London?” Louis props himself up on his elbows and watches Harry as he chews the inside of his cheek and then starts pinching his lower lip. “Is that what you want?”

Harry shrugs and Louis pushes himself up the rest of the way. He sits back a bit and grabs for Harry’s legs where they’re folded underneath him, tugging on them until he straightens them out and lets them lay over top of Louis’ legs. While he waits for Harry to answer, Louis takes off his boots and socks and tosses them to the floor, then pulls one of his feet into his lap and starts massaging his heel.

“I don’t know.” Harry pushes his coat back off his shoulders and wiggles until it falls behind him, slipping off of the mattress and onto the floor. “Can’t believe you’re touching my sweaty, gross feet.”

“You have icing on your face,” Louis says and sticks his tongue out at him. “London’s definitely a city. Gemma’s moving?”

“Her roommate is leaving soon. Couple of weeks. Oh… What am I going to do without you to rub my feet?” Harry flexes both of his feet and pokes Louis’ thigh with his toe, then he rubs at his cheek with the back of his hand, but misses the icing completely. 

Louis hums and says, “Have to learn to do it yourself. Maybe you can pay Gemma.” 

“Maybe.” Harry leans back on both of his hands and looks up at the ceiling. “She says there’s a coffee shop she goes to every morning that’s always hiring. Not sure what that says about the management, but…”

“What about school?”

“Dunno. I want to go, but I don’t know what for. I like helping you and Zayn with the maths and physics, but I don’t want to do that. I’ll think of something.”

Harry decides to go visit Gemma after Louis leaves, but he’ll stay in Donny until the lease on the flat is up in December, then he’ll go to his family’s Christmas, then back down to London with Gemma. That way he can still help the ladies at the bakery until they find someone else and he won’t be in a rush to move. 

∞

The week leading up to Louis’ departure is bittersweet. Harry takes as much time as he can off of work, stocking the fridge so that they don’t have to go out at all, and they only leave the bed when they absolutely have to. He keeps Louis busy enough that he doesn’t have the time or energy to worry about Harry and tries to make him focus more on preparing as best as he can. 

It’s unfair and Louis knows it, to feel sad for himself about leaving Harry, so he hides it as well as he can. After all, Harry’s the one planning to wait for him. Harry’s the one who’ll be left alone. Harry’s the one willingly living the next five years of his life not knowing whether Louis survives the journey to 2023. For Louis, those five years will pass in a matter of seconds. There’s no logical reason for him to feel sorry for himself, so instead he gets frustrated and angry with himself, which is even harder to keep from Harry.

“Can’t believe you’re leaving tonight,” Harry mumbles, his lips brushing against the skin of Louis’ chest. He’s laying almost completely on top of Louis, resting all of weight on him, and they’ve been in this same position for almost an hour, just spending time as close to each other as they can.

Louis sighs and, even to his own ears, it sounds sad.

Harry crosses his arms on Louis’ chest and props his chin up on them so that Louis has to tuck his chin a little if he wants to look at him properly. “Why are you so down? I know you’re worried about me, but you’re going to see me like, tomorrow or the next—” 

“Hopefully.” Louis shrugs as best as he can under Harry’s weight. When he sees the confusion on Harry’s face, he bites his tongue. He had been so good at keeping that fear under wraps. 

Harry gasps and scrambles up and off the bed, grabbing clothes from the floor and rushing out of the room before Louis can untangle his legs from the sheets. 

In nothing but his pants, Louis follows Harry out of the bedroom, and finds him already dressed in the same grey joggers and ripped white t-shirt that he always wears as soon as they’re clean. While Louis watches, he shoves his bare feet into his trainers, leaving them untied, snatches his hoodie off the back of the sofa, grabs his keys, and is halfway out the door before Louis realizes he’s leaving.

“Where are you going?” Louis manages to ask through his confusion.

Slowly, he turns around and Louis gasps quietly at the sight of tears welling up in his eyes. He looks down, but Louis can see that he’s blinking rapidly and it makes his heart hurt. 

“You still don’t trust me,” Harry says and he walks outside, leaving the door open and Louis standing there in his pants.

“Fuck.” Louis sprints back to the bedroom, picks up the first piece of clothing he finds on the floor—Harry’s jeans—pulls them on and runs through the flat and outside, throwing open the door to Harry’s car as he backs out of the drive. 

“Get out.” Harry’s hands grip the steering wheel tightly and he’s staring straight ahead with his foot on the brake, but the car in reverse. 

Instead, Louis pulls the passenger door closed and turns in his seat to fully face Harry. “Baby, I…”

“Jesus. Fine.” Harry shifts into park, but leaves it running, climbs back out of the car, and slams the door. 

Before he chases after him, Louis turns off the ignition and pockets the keys, then he climbs out of the car and follows him down the road, yelling, “Wait, Harry! I’m sorry! I…”

Harry spins around, stumbling over the laces of his untied trainers, and catches himself. With his arms crossed tightly over his chest, he rubs his hands over his biceps, and takes a deep breath. “You have no reason… no right… I can’t believe you don’t trust that I’ll be there.”

“It’s not that.” Louis slows to a stop in front of him. “It’s not… I _do_ trust you. I do. I don’t want you to be unhappy waiting. I don’t want you to… to resent me.”

“How can you…” Harry shakes his head and clenches his jaw, looking away as he asks, “Do you resent me?”

“What? Why would I?”

“For not answering your calls? For returning that package at Christmas? For cutting you out of my life?” He looks back at Louis, throws his hands in the air and shouts, “All of it!”

“I could never hold any of that against you, Harry. None of that is your fault.” Louis looks down, surprised to see that his feet are bare and all he’s wearing are Harry’s jeans, which aren’t even fastened and are barely hanging onto his hips. He pulls them up and buttons them, wraps his arms around himself, suddenly aware that he’s shivering. “It’s my—”

“I’m so tired of this. At least, with you gone, I won’t have to hear you trying to blame yourself for something that is literally no one’s fault.” Harry sighs and takes his hoodie off, handing it to Louis. “Put it on. You’re freezing.”

Reluctantly, Louis takes the sweatshirt and pulls it on. “Thanks.”

“Lou, I wish… I wish you’d believe me. Five years? It’s going to suck, yeah, but I’ll survive. I’ll be fine. I’ve got Gemma, London, a new job, school eventually… If I have to, I’ll work two jobs while I’m in school to keep myself busy.” Harry steps closer, the line between his eyebrows deepens, and as always, Louis wants to rub it away, so he reaches up and does, briefly wondering how much deeper that line will be in five years and he hopes he gets to see it. “I love you, Lou, and that’s not going to stop. Especially knowing that you’re basically going to wake up tomorrow, _five years in the future,_ just like this, loving me the same way… I’m not giving that up.”

Louis closes his eyes and whispers, “I don’t… I really don’t deserve you.”

Harry’s hands squeeze his shoulders tightly and Louis looks up at him just as he growls, “You do.”

“I…”

“You do.” Harry uses his grip on Louis’ shoulders to turn him around, steps as close as he can behind him, and walks forward, forcing Louis to walk with him or fall over. They must look ridiculous, and Louis belatedly thinks about the neighbors and hopes that none of them have looked outside to see what all of the racket was about. He lets Harry march him back to the flat, up the steps, and through the door before he says anything.

Once they’re inside, while Harry kicks off his trainers, Louis says, “I’m sorry you thought I didn’t—”

“Do you really think you don’t deserve to be happy, Lou?” Harry frowns when Louis doesn’t answer right away and nudges him to walk towards the bedroom. “Get undressed and get in the bed. I’m grabbing another blanket.”

There’s no point in arguing, and if there’s a chance that he’ll die tonight, he wants to be close to Harry while he can, so Louis quickly strips back down to his pants and climbs under the duvet. Harry unzips one of the sleeping bags and throws it over the bed, takes off his joggers and t-shirt, and joins Louis under the covers.

“You deserve everything, Lou. The most happiness.” Harry cuddles closer until they’re breathing the same air, wrapping himself around Louis, somehow still warm despite the cold outside. “I know we haven’t talked about it. I mean, not since… you know. But I’m basically planning to marry you and have babies with you and make you happy for the rest of your life, so… adjust. Get used to the idea.”

Having everything he’s ever wanted seems so impossible, and yet he’s living the impossible, so maybe happiness isn’t truly out of reach.

He’s still shivering when Harry kisses him, but soon they’re both warm enough that they push the sleeping bag onto the floor. Louis rolls them over so that he’s laying on top of Harry, settling between his legs and kissing his Adam’s apple. 

“What do you want, baby?” Louis asks, and sucks at the soft skin at the base of his neck until it’s sure to leave a mark, a reminder of him after he’s gone.

Harry runs his hands up and down Louis’ back, gently trailing his fingertips over his spine. He wraps his legs around Louis and says, “Want you to fuck me. Just like this.”

Louis nods and reaches for the nightstand, crawling sideways and grabbing lube and a condom out of the drawer.

“Can we, um… Can we not use…” Harry bites his lip and looks away like he’s afraid to finish his sentence. Or afraid that Louis won’t want to.

“I, um… We can.” Louis drops the condom back into the drawer and sits back between Harry’s legs, smoothing his hand over the hair on his inner thigh until Harry looks up at him again. “You don’t like it bare though.”

“Not normally, no. But I just…” He shakes his head. “I don’t care about the mess right now.”

Louis smiles and brushes Harry’s hair back, tucking it behind his ear. Then he leans over and presses a soft, slow kiss to Harry’s lips.

He always takes his time with Harry, loves how tight he is at first and loves feeling his body relax around his fingers. If he does it right, Harry can come from only Louis’ fingers, and it’s scorchingly hot when it happens. Harry writhing on the bed, usually with one hand clawing at the sheets and the other tangled in his hair, pulling it hard whenever Louis hits his prostate dead on. Louis only considers it for a few seconds because that’s not what Harry wants tonight.

By the time Harry is riding four of his fingers, hands pressed against the headboard, head thrown back as he whines and begs Louis to just fuck him already, Louis is sweaty and grinding down on the mattress.

Louis gingerly pulls his fingers free and Harry’s body seems to melt into the mattress, his legs fall completely open and he sighs quietly. After he slicks himself up, Louis leans over and licks along Harry’s crack, fucking his tongue inside and making Harry jerk at the unexpected sensations, then sitting back again.

“That’s not your cock,” Harry murmurs and Louis cackles and pinches his bum cheek, then he gestures for Harry to lift up so he can put a pillow underneath his hips.

When he lines up, he has trouble keeping his eyes away from Harry’s face as he pushes against Harry’s rim and his body pulls him inside. Hot and tight as always, but the drag without the condom is enough to make him pause halfway, worried that he’ll come too soon.

Harry lifts his arms again, pushes against the headboard and meets Louis’ hips. With his hands on either side of Harry’s chest, Louis lowers himself down and kisses Harry gently, keeping eye contact as he pulls out and slowly fucks back inside. He keeps his thrusts slow and deep, gazing into Harry’s eyes and trying to convey everything that he feels but can’t say. 

How much he loves him, how beautiful he is, how he’ll miss him even though he won’t be gone for more than a few days on his own timeline. How he hopes that Harry does wait for him while simultaneously wanting Harry to find happiness however he can. How he hates that he’ll miss five years of Harry’s life, how afraid he is that Harry will have grown into a different man in that time, how he expects it at the same time that he wishes he could prevent it from happening. 

He slips his arm under Harry’s leg and lifts it, plants his hand on the mattress so that Harry’s knee is to his chest, and pistons his hips, fucking him harder, hitting his prostate, and telling himself that the tears pooling in Harry’s eyes are just a physical reaction and not his sadness at Louis leaving. 

Resting all of his weight on that hand, he fists Harry’s dick, fast and rough, but lets go and drops his hand to the bed to support his body when his orgasm overtakes him. Harry takes over, steadily stroking himself as Louis erratically thrusts into him, coming inside, making him wet. Louis circles his hips, grinding against Harry’s arse and when his cock rubs against Harry’s prostate again, he comes, clenching around Louis and bringing his arms down to hold Louis and pull him down on top of him completely.

With his face against Harry’s neck, Louis can feel where his tears slid down and into his hair. He kisses him, tasting the salt, and kisses him again and again until the tears are gone from his skin. Carefully, Louis pushes himself up and back, pulling out as he sits up to look down at the mess they’ve made. 

“Shower, baby?” Louis asks quietly and tugs on Harry’s hand until he nods and lets Louis pull him off of the bed. 

In the shower, they stand under the weak spray and Louis washes Harry from head to toe, stopping to lick him out until Harry’s legs are shaking so much that Louis worries he’ll fall. He stands back up so that they’re face to face, and Harry wraps his hand around them both, wanking them while Louis reaches around and plays with Harry’s hole, fucking his fingers inside gently and making sure he’s completely clean. 

After they’ve washed, they stay there, clutching at each other. The water of the shower washes away their tears.

∞

His hop uniform has been sitting folded in a drawer for a year and it’s strange to look at it again. He slides it into a shopping bag and shoves his feet into Harry’s shoes for the last time. He’ll leave them, along with the rest of Harry’s clothes that he’s wearing, in one of the lockers. At least he doesn’t have to walk to the facility and Harry can drive him there. It’s all he can muster as far as positive thoughts.

Louis heaves a sigh and knocks his knuckles against the passenger window to the low hum of the music, trying to ignore the churning in his stomach that’s causing him to feel slightly lightheaded. It’s not working. He lets his head rest against the seat back and closes his eyes, breathing slowly in an effort to calm himself down. The weight of Harry’s hand on his thigh makes him open his eyes and he lays his hand on top, curling his fingers underneath, but not holding tight. Just knowing he’s there is enough.

It’s not a long drive at all, just a few miles, and Harry drives as slowly as he can to still get Louis there by eleven o’clock. Louis and Zayn have discussed it and they’ve decided that three hours is more than enough time for everything that’ll be required of him before the hop to 2023. 

“Just drive up to the garage?” Harry asks after he pulls off the road towards the facility.

Louis nods. “Yeah. Zayn says they’ll be watching the security cameras for your car. They’re supposed to open the bay, you drive in, then we’re supposed to go inside for debriefing…”

Harry hums and chews his lip, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry. It’s just like an interview of sorts. And you heard Zayn. He promises no more than an hour. Just, um… be honest, answer their questions, and…” Louis trails off when he looks over and sees a tear rolling down Harry’s cheek. “Baby…”

“Shhh… I’m fine. It’s fine. I’m just going to miss you. And I don’t like the idea of answering personal questions about us. I’m sorry I’m such a mess.” Harry pulls up to the garage door, it slides open, and he drives inside. 

“Don’t… If they ask anything too personal, tell them to fuck off.” Louis shrugs. “I… I guess we should get out of the car.”

The door swings open and Lieutenant Edwards nods and asks, “Tomlinson? Styles?” and when they both answer, she says, “Follow me.”

Louis clasps Harry’s hand tightly and leads him into the building, then hands over the bag with his uniform. They trail a few yards behind Lieutenant Edwards through the corridor, upstairs, down another corridor, past the room that Louis stayed in—will stay in, to what look like two offices directly across the hall from each other. 

“You two may say goodbye out here. Tomlinson, you’ll go across the hall. Styles, you’re in here with me.” She nods again, then disappears behind her closed door.

“You okay?” Louis asks quietly, turning to face Harry and grab hold of his other hand. He’s quite obviously not, with tears streaming down his face, but he nods and lets out a watery laugh.

“Don’t want you to worry…” Harry sniffles and when his breath catches, throws his arms around Louis’ shoulders, burying his face against his neck. “I’ll be okay. Promise.”

Louis holds him, his arms around Harry’s waist and his forehead resting on his shoulder. They stay there, losing track of time, just standing as close as they possibly can, touching from head to toe, breathing in sync. 

“Love you,” Harry whispers.

“Love you so much, baby.” Louis lifts his head and Harry follows suit. “I guess, um… I’ll see you soon?”

Harry brings his hands to cradle Louis’ face, tilts his head, and takes one last, slow, sweet kiss, then he nods and steps back, waiting with his hand on the doorknob. Louis reaches for the opposite door, turns the knob, and when Harry waves him on, he goes inside.

The debriefing interview lasts almost two hours. Louis is annoyed and tired by the time it’s finished, but at least he knows that Harry was only interviewed for about forty-five minutes, because that’s when Lieutenant Edwards joined in on Louis’ interview. It only bothers him so much because he spends the entire time repeating things he’s talked to Zayn about numerous times. He knows they only want to get everything right, but it’s frustrating. All he can think is that he could’ve had two more hours with Harry.

When they’ve finally exhausted themselves of questions, they take him to another room to run tests. The physical tests are the same: a short jog on a treadmill, blood pressure before and after, a few small vials of blood, body temperature, height, and weight. And when he’s finished, the lieutenants lead Louis back downstairs to the locker room, where his uniform is laid out, freshly cleaned in the sterile laundry room on site. There’s a large zippered plastic storage bag where he’s to put Harry’s clothes and shoes that he’s wearing, and a resettable combination padlock that looks oddly familiar. 

After he’s undressed and folded Harry’s clothes, carefully placing them and his shoes into the bag, Louis reaches for the nearest locker and freezes with his hand in midair. Then he moves his hand one locker over and opens that one instead, setting the combination as Harry’s birthday, and locking it securely. 

He showers the same way he did the last time, scrubbing his entire body twice over, and drying his hair before getting dressed. The whole time, his mind keeps drifting back to the lock and the fact that he’d seen it before his hop back. He shakes his head and checks the clock on the wall. He has a few minutes before he has to go through the door on the right marked ‘ARRIVAL’, so he sits on the bench and meditates. Or tries to. It’s not that he’s nervous, because he’s past that point and now just feels a sense of resignation. It’s that, as much as he tried over the last few weeks, he hasn’t been practicing as regularly as he used to, so it’s not as easy. Still, he sits until it’s time.

The room is almost identical to the departure room, except that it’s missing two major elements. The tube and the table. He wonders what might be in the departure room now, but decides it probably looks the same minus those two things. It’ll be a couple of years before they get to that point and he hopes that he gave Zayn all of the information that they might possibly need to get it right.

Instead of the heavy metal tube and table, there’s a simple rectangular aluminum platform about three inches high. Louis crosses the room and looks down on it.

“Tomlinson,” Lieutenant Harold says and gestures to the table. “If you’ll lay down, we’ll get started. You’ll need to recite your assignment.”

It’s not deja vu because Louis knows it’s standard procedure. It’s just a little bit amusing that he’s basically having the same conversation as he did a year ago. Or five years from now. 

Louis takes a deep breath and begins, “Louis William Tomlinson, Chrononaut. Mission Two, return trip. Traveling from the Chronoarrival Chamber at zero-two hundred hours, Saturday 13th of October 2018 in Doncaster, UK to the Chronodeparture Chamber at zero-two hundred hours Friday 14th of October 2023 in Doncaster, UK.”

“If the mission should go wrong, sir?”

He blinks, then closes his eyes, and lets his mind fill with memories of Harry. “If the mission goes wrong, it was nice to meet you, Lieutenants.”

Lieutenant Harold nods and says, “It’s an honor, sir. Counting down from five to begin. Five, four, three, two, one.”

Louis works to relax his body and mind while they wait. There’s nothing for the lieutenants to do but watch and there’s nothing for Louis to do but hope for the best. The technology transporting him five years into the future isn’t in that room or even in that time. It’s five years in the future, reaching back and pulling him forward in time.

At first, the sensations are familiar. Tingling limbs and all of his senses seem distant, but instead of the sudden disappearance of consciousness, all of his senses come back at once. Louis feels nauseated and achy. His body is sore all over, but tolerably so, until excruciating bolts of pain zip through his body and he finds that he can’t move. There’s a faint humming sound that grows louder and louder and Louis wants to cover his ears, but he can’t. He wants to scream, but his mouth and throat are paralyzed, and he wonders what will happen if he does vomit because the nausea is increasing. Lights and colors flash behind his eyelids and then his body feels like it’s being torn apart and burned at the same time.

And then it stops. For a blissful few seconds, he feels absolutely nothing, and then the nausea hits him again, along with an agonizing panic because he’s going to be sick. There’s no question. 

His eyes fly open and he rolls to the side and violently empties his stomach, falls back down and blinks up at the ceiling. A hazy image floats in his vision and he registers it a split second before he passes out. Zayn.

∞

When Louis comes to, he’s in what looks like a hospital room, though he’s almost certain it’s not. There’s an IV in his arm and a catheter in his dick and he’s definitely not happy about it. He feels like absolute shit. Every muscle in his body hurts and he’s exhausted. But he’s alive.

He lets his head rest back on the pillow and looks to the side, then pushes the red button by his hand and waits.

Two nurses rush into the room, followed by a harried looking Zayn, who stops just inside the door to stare wide-eyed at Louis.

“You’re awake,” Zayn says and takes a step closer while the nurses check the IV and Louis’ blood pressure. 

“I’m awake. I’m alive. Did we do it?”

Zayn nods. “You made it. Do you need anything?”

“Yeah.” Louis turns to the nurse closest to him and asks, “Can we lose the catheter?”

While the nurses take care of removing that and the IV, Zayn steps out of the room, returning with a tray once they’ve finished.

“Hungry?”

Louis nods and sits up a little. Zayn pushes the tray table over so that Louis can reach it. It’s a bowl of plain porridge and two pieces of toast with a cup of water. 

“Sorry, mate. You’ve been out for two days. IV fluids only. Have to take it slow. They said you’re fine. Your body is exhausted—”

“I could’ve told you that.” Louis takes a bite of toast. It’s better than nothing.

“You have to stay for twenty-four hours now that you’re awake. After that, regular food, regular clothes, and we go home.”

“Home?”

“Florida. Niall’s on his way from Australia now. He and Liam weren’t in as bad shape as you.”

Louis nods and tries not to hear what Zayn isn’t saying. “Missed you, mate.”

“You have no idea. I feel like I’ve been part of some long-running performance art and I can finally drop the mask.”

“It’s weird seeing you all buttoned up.”

“Kind of feels like I have a secret identity. I might keep the clothes.” At Louis’ raised eyebrows, Zayn giggles and says, “Kidding, mate. I didn’t know if you’d have memory problems or what, so I figured this is how 2023 Louis knows me.”

“So weird… You can get your hand tattoo now.”

“Yeah, I guess I can.” Zayn smiles and reaches over to pull Louis into a hug. “We have so much to talk about, but, um… We’ll talk later. You get some rest, if you can.”

There’s another short debriefing about the hop forward, but other than that, Louis spends the next twenty-four hours bored out of his mind, eating boring food, finally drinking tea after he begged for it, and actively not thinking about Harry.

When they let him out on Wednesday, Zayn walks with him down to the locker room. “Your things are all still in your locker. Glad we decided I needed to follow you out here on the next plane or you would’ve puked on someone else’s shoes.”

“Sorry—” 

Zayn shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. You were only technically gone for an hour, and then you were out for two days. Get a shower, change. I’ll get your bag from upstairs. Text me when you’re done.”

“I don’t—”

Zayn pulls Louis’ phone out of his pocket and hands it over. “I picked it up from Lieutenant Edwards just before I came to your room.”

Louis takes the phone and nods, turning it over in his hands. “I’ll text you.”

After showering as quickly as possible, Louis steps back into the locker room with dripping wet hair and a towel around his waist. He turned on his phone just before his shower and left it sitting on the bench and he peers down at it while he finishes drying off. No messages. 

His clothes are there, but he leaves them alone. Instead he slowly turns the dial on the locked locker next to it, holding his breath until he turns the final number and pulls. The lock falls open and Louis slides it free, opens the door and finds the zippered plastic bag inside. There’s a fine layer of dust on the bag, so he wipes it off with the towel, but if the bag did it’s job, the clothes should be fine. He opens the bag and pulls Harry’s clothes and shoes out, sets the shoes on the bench and sits down with the clothes in his hands, burying his face in them. Five years and they still smell like Harry. Louis dresses in Harry joggers and shirt, pulls Harry’s hoodie over his head, and Harry’s socks and shoes onto his feet. Then he takes his own clothes and stuffs them into the plastic bag, unlocks his phone, and sees a text from an unknown number.

It’s Zayn. 

_Realized you can’t text if you don’t have my number._

Louis texts him back that he’s ready. Zayn meets him in the hall with Louis’ bag in his hand and Louis takes it, opening the top zipper enough to stuff the plastic bag of his clothes inside, then he follows Zayn down the corridor.

When they step down into the garage, Louis taps Zayn on the shoulder, and when he turns, Louis throws his arms around Zayn’s neck, overcome with emotions that he’s been too exhausted to experience. Zayn squeezes him tightly and Louis laughs almost hysterically while tears stream down his face onto Zayn’s starched button-down shirt.

When he catches his breath, Louis loosens his hold on Zayn, steps back a bit, and yells, “I didn’t die!” Then immediately falls into another fit of uncontrollable laughter. There’s a mixture of relief and exhilaration and regret and sorrow and Louis’ body and mind don’t know how to handle it. 

“You didn’t die,” Zayn agrees, smiling and laughing. 

∞

On the drive to Heathrow, Louis and Zayn discuss plans for a proper celebration later on, but Louis is still tired, so he nods off before they get to the airport. He sleeps through most of the flight to Florida, still sleepy when he gets off the plane, and when Louis steps out of the airport in Orlando, he’s almost knocked over by the heat and humidity. Zayn tells him that he has the rest of the week off, though he will have to come in Friday morning for yet another debriefing, but they’re giving him the time off to recuperate. 

If he wasn’t so tired, he wouldn’t want it. He still doesn’t really want it because time alone will lead to thoughts of Harry and he’s not sure how much of that he can handle. There’s still no text or call from him and there can only be one reason for that, but Louis is too embarrassed to ask Zayn. After all, he made Zayn swear not to mention Harry if he made it back to 2023, so convinced at the time that Harry would find someone else and give up waiting. Louis wishes he’d called Zayn one last time to change his mind, but it’s too late and he’s too stubborn. 

Zayn drives him to his flat and offers to help him up the stairs, but Louis waves him off. It’s only one bag and it’s not heavy. He fishes his keys out of the front pocket and turns to looks at Zayn. “Thanks, mate.”

“Call me later, yeah?”

Louis nods and climbs out of Zayn’s car, then slowly makes his way up the stairs to his flat. Condo. Whatever. As he reaches the door, he realizes that his place is in the same state it was when he left a few days ago. Clothes all over the floor of his bedroom, dirty dishes in the sink, no food in the fridge… Louis sighs. He’ll deal with it later since he has the time off of work. And he’ll order take away tonight. 

The key slides easily into the lock and there’s a slight pang of loss at the memory of the flat in Donny and the temperamental lock on the door. He pushes it open and hangs his key by the door, drops his bag on the floor, and leans back against the door to close it.

All of the lights are on, which is strange, he could’ve sworn he turned them off, but maybe not, since he was in a hurry and half asleep that morning. He bypasses the kitchen and heads for his bedroom, wanting nothing more than to curl up under the duvet and feel sorry for himself and a little angry with Harry. 

When Louis opens the bedroom door, it’s dark and it takes him a moment to kick off Harry’s trainers, then he opens the bathroom door and screams.

Thoughts flash through Louis’ head. Maybe he’s hallucinating. Maybe he’s still recovering from the hop. Maybe he didn’t make it at all. Maybe he’s in the wrong flat. 

Louis takes a deep breath. “Sorry, mate, sorry. Must have… Must have the wrong flat.” He backs up and shuts the bathroom door, spinning around in confusion because _this is his bedroom._ The floor is suspiciously clear and the bed is made, but that’s _his_ bed, that’s _his_ duvet, those are the shitty posters of the space shuttles that he hung up on the walls when he got rid of Harry’s framed photographs… 

The bathroom door opens behind him and he turns around, ready to scream again, but stops and stares at the man in the doorway. “Harry?”

“Lou, oh my god…” Harry moves towards him, but Louis can’t speak, completely frozen in place. 

Harry takes another step and all at once, Louis tries to absorb everything. The last four days of assuming that it was over between them, of thinking that Harry moved on with someone else, of fighting against the heartbreak that wanted to consume him… He was wrong. Harry’s changed so much in five years—short hair and more tattoos, a broader chest, more muscular arms, and that line between his eyebrows _is_ deeper. Louis’ eyes roam over Harry’s face and body and he opens his mouth to speak, but only a broken sob comes out.

Their eyes meet and Louis sees that Harry’s crying just as he registers the tears streaming down his own face and they come together, embracing. Harry holds him so tightly that it hurts, but he doesn’t care. With his arms around Harry’s back he can feel his uneven breathing, how his body shakes, and they stand there like that, overcome with emotion and clutching at each other, crying on each other’s shoulders until the tears slow enough that they’re both able to breathe normally again.

“You’re here. How?” Louis’ voice comes out scratchy and rough from crying, so he clears his throat and, when he slowly lifts his head, Harry does the same.

Harry’s gaze roams over Louis’ face for a moment. “I said I would be. You still didn’t believe—”

“You said you’d text and you didn’t. I thought you’d found someone else.” Louis opens his mouth to tell Harry it doesn’t matter, but Harry interrupts him.

“I forgot. Shit. I wanted to surprise you. Zayn got your spare key from Liam. And like, he said you’d be here a couple of days ago, but then he called and said that even though you were okay, they were keeping you for a few days. I’ve been going stir-crazy waiting for you.” Harry leans down, rests his forehead against Louis’ and closes his eyes. “I didn’t. I went out on dates every now and then to get everyone off my back, but I didn’t… I could hardly handle it. Felt like cheating. One guy kissed me—a peck on the lips—and I... I just couldn’t… I know you wanted me to try, but I couldn’t, Lou. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be…” Louis leans back and shakes his head, then brings his hands up to rest on either side of Harry’s neck and finally takes a good look at him. If possible, he’s even more beautiful at twenty-seven than he was at twenty-two and Louis closes his eyes in thanks for the opportunity to be there with him at twenty-seven and, if it’s up to him, the rest of his life. He lifts his hand and combs it through Harry’s wet hair. “Your hair…”

“It’s short. I know. I, um… I donated it and then, well…” Harry shrugs. “It looks okay?”

“Looks amazing, baby.” Louis glances down and puts a little distance between their bodies when he sees that Harry’s actually standing there naked and still wet from the shower, his towel having fallen to the floor at some point. Though it’s only been a few days on his own timeline, the little changes in Harry’s appearance make Louis want to lay him out on the bed and just drink him in. 

“You… Are you wearing my clothes?” Harry asks and shuffles back to see. 

Louis nods. “Five years in a sealed bag and they still smelled like you, so yeah.”

Harry smiles at him, so clearly endeared, then he scrunches his nose the way he always does when he’s trying not to act overly fond of Louis. “I missed you. I know that’s like, the obvious thing to say, but, Lou…”

“Well, I know technically it’s only been about four days, but I’ve missed you too.” Louis bites his lip and looks down at Harry’s naked body, at the ink that’s been added to his arms and chest. “New tattoos? Tell me about them?”

“I have so much to tell you. And I want to hear about you. How did everything go? I, um, I emailed you. The account you set up back then? And I logged into it every now and then so it’d stay valid. But yeah, hundreds of emails. I sort of used them as a way of talking to you. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, baby. I can’t wait to read them. I want to know everything. And, um… I’m tired. Everything went okay.”

“I… okay, but can you do that later, ’cause, like, I haven’t seen you in five years and I’m dying here.” Harry slips his hands under Louis’ t-shirt and runs them up the sides of his body, over his ribs and around to his back. “Want to touch you.”

Harry tugs Louis’ shirt up and over his head and pushes him towards the bed, watching him as he scoots backwards up the mattress. 

From that distance, and with the waning daylight coming in the window, Louis can see more of Harry’s body and it’s breathtaking. As Harry crawls onto the bed and looms over him, Louis can focus better on the new tattoo in the center of his chest and he gasps, reaching out to touch it. The script is small and the words form a circle around a clock face with no hands. 

“Praeteritum, praesens, futurum,” Harry says. “Zayn drew it for me.”

“Baby…” Louis traces the tip of his finger around it, then looks up to meet Harry’s gaze. “I…”

“I love you, Lou. Still, I mean. That’s you. My past, present, future. Always.”

Louis stares up at him and Harry’s words are so sincere, so heartfelt, that even though he’s laying on top of him naked, Louis can’t stand to wait another second. “Off. Get off.” He smacks at Harry’s shoulder until he rolls to the side and Louis clambers off of the bed.

“What—Are you alright?” Harry asks, frowning up at him, halfway to sitting up. 

“Stay.” Louis holds a hand up to stop Harry from getting off the bed, then turns and opens his closet. He pushes up onto his toes and feels around in the top of the closet until he finds it. Even though it isn’t breakable, Louis cradles the package in both hands as if it is, carrying it over to set it on the bed in front of Harry.

“You still have this?”

“I told you I did. Open it.” Louis reaches out and rips at the plain brown paper still wrapping the package he sent to Harry all those years ago. 

Harry looks from the package to Louis and back again, then he slowly unwraps it. It’s not a large box, just big enough to lie about what’s inside, and it’s stuffed full of packing peanuts that go everywhere as soon as Harry opens the cardboard flap. He rolls his eyes and chuckles quietly, then sticks his hand in to feel around for his six-year-old Christmas gift. 

It’s a small, rectangular, velvet box and Harry glances up with a grin before he opens it to find the small, square, silver charm attached to a thin silver necklace. He gently lifts it out of the box to inspect it. It’s lovely, Louis knows, because he had it made for Harry. The charm is the Aquarius constellation, filigreed and the stars inlaid with tiny amethyst stones. When he first had it made, Louis planned to send it to Harry for Christmas, saving the other gift to give to him when he came to visit a few months later. After things ended between them, as a last ditch effort, he packed both gifts into the box and shipped them off. 

“It’s beautiful, Lou. Thank you, but I don’t understand…”

“There’s another gift in there. Taped it to the bottom so you’d find it last.”

Harry reaches his hand back inside, spilling more packing peanuts onto the bed, until he finds it. It’s a smaller box, and Harry’s eyes go wide when he pulls it free. “Lou…”

“Just open it.” Louis taps the top of the box and waits.

Slowly, as if he’s expecting something awful to pop out, Harry lifts the lid. It’s a simple silver band with a square cut turquoise stone bezel set in the center. Louis had it made by the same man who made the necklace. “Oh… Louis, it’s beautiful.”

Harry’s beautiful. And though he originally intended it as a sort of promise ring, a substitute until he finished his contract with NASA and returned to Harry, he finds that he doesn’t want to wait anymore. “Marry me?”

“What?” Harry squawks and fumbles with the ring, almost dropping it, but catching it between both of his hands before it falls.

Louis shrugs one shoulder and reaches out to take the ring. “I… I didn’t want to wait.” He holds the ring between his thumb and forefinger and asks, “So… Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” Harry lunges at him, knocking him onto his back, and kissing him senseless. Louis grasps the ring tightly so that Harry doesn’t make him drop it and laughs when Harry starts kissing him all over his face.

When Harry seems satisfied with the number of kisses he’s given Louis, he sits up and holds his hand out, wiggling his fingers. The ring fits perfectly. 

Harry grins mischievously and pushes Louis down onto his back. “Gonna suck you off.”

With a groan, Louis closes his eyes and then tries to relax while Harry kisses over his chest and ribs and stomach, but he can’t. “Baby. Baby, wait. I want… I want to touch you too.”

“You said you were tired.” Harry leans down and blows a raspberry against Louis’ stomach, then yanks his joggers and pants down and gently kisses the head of Louis’ half-hard cock.

Louis hums at the touch. “I am, but I want… Turn around and lay down next to me.”

“Sixty-nine?”

“Yeah, lay on your side.” Louis pats the bed beside him and kicks off his pants and joggers. 

They arrange themselves so that they’re resting their heads on each other’s legs, and Louis kisses the soft skin of Harry’s inner thigh as he adjusts himself. 

“Missed you,” Harry mumbles, barely loud enough for Louis to hear, as he cups Louis’ balls and strokes Louis with a loose fist. 

When Louis looks down his body, he asks, “Were you talking to me or my dick?”

“Your dick. But I missed you too. Just… Shh…” Harry sucks the head of Louis’ cock in his mouth and Louis tries not to lose himself to the bliss. He forces his eyes open and wraps his hand around the base of Harry’s cock, then tries to give as good as he gets. 

It’s been so long for Harry and Louis wants to give him the best blow job of his life to make up for five years without, but it’s hard to concentrate when Harry’s swallowing him down. He moans around Harry’s dick when he feels his own nudge the back of Harry’s throat and the sound must do something for Harry because he bucks his hips. Louis does his best, licking firmly along the underside of Harry’s cock and sucking on the head the way that Harry likes. 

He strokes Harry’s dick with one hand and tugs on his balls with the other, then presses and massages firmly just behind them before sliding his fingers along Harry’s crack. There’s no lube, but his skin is still damp from the shower, so Louis circles his rim with the pad of his finger, sliding the tip inside when Harry pushes down on it. Harry starts to move faster, bobbing up and down on Louis’ cock, sucking hard on the head before dipping his tongue into the slit, then taking him down again. 

Louis watches Harry’s balls draw up and pulls back, sucking on the head until he starts to come then lets him slip from his mouth. He closes his eyes and wanks him, as Harry shoots off all over Louis’ face. 

When Harry finishes, he crawls around, pushes Louis onto his back, and kneels between his legs, jerking him off and staring at the mess across Louis’ cheeks and lips. Louis’ hips stutter up and he whines, coming over Harry’s fist and onto his stomach.

“Fuck, Lou. That was so fucking good.” Harry sighs happily and Louis’ body jerks when Harry tongues the tip of his dick.

“No, baby, I’ll shower. I’m too… I’m too sensitive.” Louis can’t see him through closed eyes and come on his eyelashes, but he knows Harry’s pouting anyway. “Lead me to the bathroom. I’m blind.”

Harry snorts and grabs Louis’ hand, pulling him off the bed and into the bathroom. He cleans Louis’ face while the water heats up and joins him in the shower, even though he just got out. They don’t linger too long because Louis keeps yawning and Harry apparently used most of the hot water earlier, so as soon as they’re clean, they get out and dry off and climb under the covers.

“Want to read your emails,” Louis mumbles, his face pressed against Harry’s chest.

“Tomorrow.” Harry runs his fingers through Louis’ wet hair and, once again, Louis thinks he should probably get it cut. “We have all the time in the world.”

∞

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The amazing art is by @vocabularryonthemind on Tumblr. I won their art in the 2018 1D Fanworks For Charity Auction.
> 
> A few of the emails from Harry to Louis are [here](http://kingsofeverything.tumblr.com/tagged/tshu-email/chrono), if you haven't read them.
> 
> [Here’s a link to a rebloggable fic post](http://kingsofeverything.tumblr.com/post/175858671455/the-second-hand-unwinds-by-fullonlarrie-louis), if you’d like to share.


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